Here is Jed Rothwell's analysis:
After the 18-hour test, Prof. Levi said "In my opinion, all chemical sources are now excluded." See:
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3108242.ece
I agree with him. The reasons are a little complicated and take some time to explain. If you will bear with me --
Before the first test, Levi looked around the outside of the device. In the photo you can see the machine is mounted on a wooden stand, which was placed on a table at an odd angle. The mounting gives you clear access to the bottom. You can see there are no wires or pipes going into it. The odd angle of the stand also happens to ensure that. The stand can be moved around and pushed back and forth, so you could not secretly mate a wire or pipe to it.
The control box wires are ordinary household wiring. Above 3 kW they will burn [comment: that is for US electricity supply I assume, but even at 240V ordinary wiring would be pressed to carry 10kW without getting rather hot]. That excludes electricity as the source of the heat, even if we do not trust the power meter. (The power meter was an ordinary, off-the-shelf watt-meter, placed between the wall socket and the control box, so there is no way odd power forms might fool it. It resembles a Kill-a-watt:
http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html)
Before the second test, Levi was more careful. He opened up the control box and confirmed there was no hidden source of fuel, he looked around the outside of the machine, and he also looked inside it. He looked everywhere but inside the cell itself, which is about 1 L in volume. (He now plans to open the cell and examine the Ni catalyst with mass spectroscopy, but that has not happened yet. More about that below.)
So, we know there is not external electricity of fuel. If there is a chemical source of energy secreted in the cell, it has to fit into 1 L. It would have to produce as much energy as 26 kg of gasoline, which takes up about 35 L. I do not think that any chemical fuel is as energy-dense as this. If Rossi has discovered one, it is nearly as extraordinary and important as cold fusion.
Needless to say, no battery could come anywhere near this. Batteries are far less energy dense in volume and mass than liquid fuel.
Furthermore, as a practical matter, all types of liquid fuel require some sort of tank, regulator and burner. Solid fuel such a coal or solid rocket fuel can be ignited and it may burn at a constant rate, although it is difficult to control. Liquid or gas requires hardware, especially a burner, like this one:
http://www.ecvv.com/product/1067963.html
To produce a 15 kW flame, you could never fit the burner part into 1 L, never mind the fuel. This is more heat than a large 50-gallon gas water heater produces. Look under a water heater and you will see a burner and flame take up many liters of space.
Another problem is that the 1 L cell is gas tight. The hydrogen tank did not lose pressure or outgas, and the weight of it did not change. There are no visible holes in the cell. So you have to supply both fuel and oxygen. So it would have to be not 35 times better than gasoline (by volume) but ~100 times better. Add in the equipment you need to regulate the flame and it would have to be thousands of times better.
Finally, as a practical matter, any liquid, gas or even solid fuel placed in a such a small container, and ignited to produce 15 kW, would explode. It would be a bomb.
Let me get back to Levi's future plans. As I mentioned above, he plans to run the machine for a while, and then open the cell and examine the nickel catalyst, which he will compare to an unused sample. Rossi has reportedly given the university a €1 million grant for this project, and Levi plans to cooperate with CERN for the mass spectroscopy. (Rossi is wealthy from his previous business ventures. He has spent at least another €1 million on his research.)
Obviously, if there is some sort of extraordinary chemical fuel in the cell, or if Rossi managed to hide wires or a fuel pipe despite the despite the outward appearance of the machine, the fake nature of the machine will be obvious the moment they look inside the cell.
If there is no nuclear reaction going on inside the cell, the mass spec analysis will reveal that fact. As far as I know, all cold fusion cathodes that produced large amounts of heat had transmuted elements in them, with unnatural isotopic ratios. So, if they run the machine for a few months, and produce several thousand megajoules per gram of nickel, even if it is the hydrogen which is reacting (fusing) I am pretty sure there will be transmuted byproducts of the reaction in the metal, and this will be indisputable proof that the machine is a nuclear reactor, not a chemical cell.
The point is, Rossi himself is not only allowing this test, he is paying for it! If he were a faker or scammer, the last thing he would do is allow experts from a university and CERN to open up his cell, look inside, and take samples of the material for analysis. There is no conceivable "fake" cell that would not be detected by these methods.
So:
1. Based on the physical size of the cell, the fact that it is gas-tight, and the intensity of the heat, we can rule out any chemical source of fuel.
2. Based on common sense, we can conclude that Rossi is not a scammer. He would not take steps that will reveal his own scam, especially not at a cost of €1 million to himself.
Let me add that the calorimetry is so simple and the heat measured is so hight that I do not think any method of faking it is possible. People have said that Rossi might be a sleight of hand stage magician who fools people. A stage magician fools the human senses, especially sight, by distraction and various other methods. No stage magician in history has ever fooled a thermocouple or flowmeter. Instruments are totally immune to the kinds of tricks they use. If Rossi has supplied the instruments we might imagine he changed them, but Levi brought them from the university. In any case, the heat was palpable, and with the input electricity it would not have been.
Finally, getting back to point #2 above, if Rossi were a stage magician, why would he now be taking steps that ensure his trick will be revealed, he will be disgraced, and he will forfeit €1 million? What stage magician would do such a thing? Why?!? It makes absolutely no sense.
I think we can decisively rule out the chemical fuel hypothesis.
- Jed
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How wrong I was. I've learned to love Mr.Greene's passionate delivery now. 
