As most of you know by now, there was a report of an independent validation test performed on Andrea Rossi's Ecat this week.  (view it here)  

Overall positive impression

Our preliminary assessment among the team is that it is a generally good report with no obvious errors or glaring omissions.  It is easily the best evidence to date that Rossi has a working technology, and, if verified openly and widely, this report could be remembered as historic.

That's not to say that we feel total confidence in the report, either.  It is unfortunate that there are some justified concerns about the independence of the test team, since many of the authors are names that we have seen before in the context of Rossi.  Plus, we are disappointed that none of the authors are willing to present at ICCF18 in July, which would certainly be an extremely welcoming audience for such a report, if the details stand up to further scrutiny.

Other technical questions and criticisms

It was good that the authors were satisfyingly conservative when things were in question.  Examples include using an emissivity of 1 for the first test, using bottom side of apparatus, including the shadowed areas, and adding an additional 10% for unknown errors.

It was also satisfying that even if they ignored convection and included the control box power, it was still above unity.  

The whole COP discussion is rather arbitrary IF the input power goes primarily to heating up the bulk to trigger it thermally, as it appears.  A little insulation - or better, yet, an adjustable cooling system, might allow the device to run at or near self sustaining.  

However, some things about the input power measurement aren't entirely clear.  A block diagram of the wiring and instrumentation points would clarify where they were measuring the power input from at different points in the experiment.  Some screen captures of the wave form on the power input would be stronger indication that it was something the power analyzer could accurately measure.  Rossi has mentioned using frequencies to stimulate the reaction to occur.  If the frequency of that was high enough, the power meter may not "see" the power delivered by that part of the wave form.  If the control box was putting out that sort of signal for the live run and the "dummy" run, though, the dummy run would have appeared to show excess energy, which is good that it did not according to the report.  However, the active load may interact in a way that allows high frequency power use while the resistive load does not.  It is not clear from the report if the control box was used in the dummy mode in the same way it was during the active run.

The specs for the power meter used are here:  http://www.industrial-needs.com/technical-data/power-anlayser-PCE-830.htm 

I'm not very convinced by the heating cycle shape argument - that is a system with a lot of non-linearities and multiple time constants involved.  I think more tests, or comparison to the temperature curves of the "dummy" unit, and with varying controlled heater power cycles would be a more valid comparison.

One further takeaway was that it seamed from this report, that this reactor design is difficult to control at the higher COPS. Strong evidence of this is the failure of the first test. This may be due to the nature of close location of nano particles in the fuel mix but may be effectively resolved by better thermal extraction as mentioned above.

Call for more openness to prove this to the world definitively

We, the MFMP, on behalf of the global population, call on the authors and Andrea Rossi to make the raw data and more detailed instrumention details for the entire test available for verification of calculations made form the data.  We are willing to host the data and help stimulate the analysis of it, or simply be another participant re-analyzing it.  

This publication raises the bar for Defkalion, Brillouin, and anybody else claiming a valid technology to present something more compelling, also.  

Many comments in the LENR blogosphere have suggested that the MFMP would be a good, independent, trust worthy validator.  We are honoured by these views and would certainly be eager to help facilitate any further validation tests for Rossi, Defkallion, or Brillouin etc. in any way that would ensure the facts are established whilst the IP of the originator is wholly protected.