Back in November 2015 I had a conversation with Andrea Rossi’s closest technician and engineer since 2012, Fulvio Fabiani, which I will report on here. Let me first make clear that the quite lengthy report has absolutely no value if you’re convinced that the E-Cat technology doesn’t work. At the most it will be anecdotic. People considering the E-Cat technology to be valid will, on the other hand, find some of Fabiani’s statements to be interesting.
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Fabiani, 48, was born and grew up in Rome, Italy. He had a great passion for information technology as a child and made his first video game at the age of 12. He studied electronics, electro technology and computer science, and for some years he made a military career as an officer in the Italian Military Force.
He also worked as a consultant for court cases regarding information technology, and as a system administrator at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics before moving to the US, working for the airport security technology provider InVision Technologies. Later, he specialized in certification of circuit boards in gaming & gambling machines, which led him to working with communication technology between online gaming systems and bank systems, traveling across a series of countries in the ex Soviet Union for seven years.
In 2012, a common friend introduced him to Rossi who was then looking for a person who could develop and improve the power supply system for the first version of the E-Cat, and Fabiani was invited to have a look at Rossi’s device.
“I have to admit, and I always said this, that when I came there I didn’t believe it was working,” Fabiani told me.
“As a skeptic I started there, and in the beginning Rossi wouldn’t let me see any data. Gradually he gained confidence since I solved a few problems. And after some time I found myself with the truth in my hands, having made some calculations, and I was amazed. I made the same calculations twenty times and I tried to find the error, but there was no error.
“Now after seeing everything that Rossi is doing, and the levels at which we have arrived, there really is no error, but already at that time he saw things that ordinary people were not yet able to see.
“Either you have seen this from the start, or you have to remain puzzled. If you’re skeptical, then until you have a 100 percent proof, until the hammer hits your finger, you won’t believe that your adversary has a hammer.
“Many people play on this, and especially on the fact that Rossi has a rather closed character, as many geniuses. He is a genius who has an impressive way of reasoning. I sometimes find it difficult to follow him. You should see him when he arrives disheveled, shirt inside out, running around in the laboratory. He reminds you of the scientist from ‘Back to the Future’.
“He comes with a paper fluttering, saying ‘Oh, I had this idea, we have to try this’, throwing away 15 days of your setup of a reactor because he wants to try something different, and you have not even finished the idea that he had previously. Rossi is an avalanche of great ideas.
“He has an ability, not of imagination but of reasoning about physics that is impressive. I see him analyzing immense formulas of physical behavior of matter that leave me speechless, and sometimes he goes: ‘Look, they made a sign error here, how is that possible?’ Because he’s not reading the book. He’s analyzing it, hair by hair. He studies 24h because he analyses everything that others say, because they don’t convince him. He’s like that, also regarding what I say to him, even though he doesn’t know much about electrical engineering and electronics. But he looks it up. He questions the world itself.
“I know him well by now. We have conflicts and arguments but also friendship and mutual trust, all this because as an engineer in charge I have to run things well. There are times when he doesn’t even turn them on, because he has already gone further, and so I’m skipping some operational steps. But he has already simulated their behavior in his head, and therefore he doesn’t care. That is genius.”
Talking about the validity of the E-Cat technology, Fabiani continues:
“With the failures, I found myself having to believe in it. Why? Because when something fails, you see the behavior of the object. The next time you adjust it, then you see that it behaves very differently. And then you realize that it is something unique. We have it all filmed, which still cannot be disclosed. We have photographs of creatures that emit pure light that have completely melted the reactor down, all in a very quiet way. You just turn off the stimuli system and the reaction is switched off. It’s impressive.
“I can assure you that the shutdown of the reaction is immediate. The response at ignition with the certified technology is medium fast since we use this technology to produce steam. With steam, inertia when starting up is necessary because of the mass of water that becomes steam. But with ideas we have plans for everything, even instantaneous reactions. Now I’m working on many of Rossi’s new ideas including the E-CatX*, while also being responsible for power supply & control and maintenance on the long term test [of the 1 MW plant**].
“Until now the test is in line with the result that we expected. We encountered the biggest problems during the design and installation phase of the test plant. The most difficult thing was the choice of materials needed to withstand this new kind of energy release and this type of operation for such a long time. And we have found many little flaws—teething problems. For example, also the choice of bolts has led to a revision because some bolts were not sufficiently treated with anti-corrosive, and so they rusted. But if you don’t test you cannot say that you have a product to sell.”
As for Rossi’s ability to take advice, Fabiani says:
“Rossi doesn’t like standard reasoning. He is not a linear researcher. I find myself arguing with Andrea because his views are not compatible with other points of view in a way so you can exchange information. I am lucky that after three years I now have a certain confidence, and this confidence allows me to do things in my own way regarding the power supply system, because what he thinks is not feasible for standard and linear technicians. I’m acting almost as an interpreter from his ideas to the standard world.
“Over the years we realized that the reaction needs more stimuli than only heating. Everyone thinks that thermal stimulus is enough but that’s just the beginning. It’s not enough for maximum efficiency. It’s the base, the synthesis of the reaction. But the reaction has almost behaviors as of living matter, and it has responses as a function of the stimuli. They can be of many types other than thermal. And these are the ones that trigger, let’s call it the most fun part of it, allowing excellent gains in terms of response to the stimuli.”
Fabiani about his role:
“Rossi is the head and runs the R&D. I’m his right arm, his left arm and his legs too. We have staff, technicians who help us. Only R&D has about 12 people with me included. I’m the link between Rossi and the others for everything that regards R&D. I don’t have knowledge on the reaction because the formula is not my concern. When it is time, Rossi makes his mixtures according to his formulas, puts the charge in the cores and gives me the complete cores. A reactor is composed of a core, an excitation system, and a system for heat exchange. I look after the excitation system and the system for heat exchange, and also the physical realization of the core. But the core must be filled with the mixture of powders that Rossi from time to time recalibrates in function of the effect that he wants to achieve.
“To be more precise I am bound by an agreement with Industrial Heat, and I’m available for Rossi to be his right arm. I cannot give any more details due to an NDA”.
Talking about future development, Fabiani says:
“I have really seen… Did you see Blade Runner? The quote at the end, ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe’. It’s true. I assure you that I have seen things that only I, Rossi and a few other people saw. We really saw things… I really saw the new frontier of energy. There is nothing in comparison. You cannot imagine. I speak of the E-CatX* and many others of Rossi’s experiments. We have tried lots of things, and we have made some twenty and more different reactors. And I can assure you that with some of them we have truly seen a new world. Energy density, reaction capacity, in the sense of things never seen. The new frontier of energy.
“The field that this reaction opens up is so vast that it’s almost impossible to imagine all the capabilities and possibilities. I have always been a lover of science fiction, and yet I was never able to believe that the famous star ships you see in the movies would become possible, because it seemed too far away. But I have to say that when I saw what Rossi was able to open, I’m seeing that world getting closer. Maybe before I die I will see those starships. Yes, it’s a child’s dream.”
Fabiani about the 1 MW trial plant**:
“My ‘baby’ as I call it, because I and my colleagues put it all together, I see my baby walking every day, and now I can even feel her breath, as I call it. You feel it when she produces steam and bubbles. We have learned to identify some moments of the reaction as a function of the type of boiling inside. Just try to imagine. Now we really know what she’s doing by the ear. And everyday I collect about 1.5 million records. And it is impressive.”
Mats: What will you do next year, after the end of the one-year trial?
“Haha, I don’t know. The game is getting too big to be handled only by Rossi and me in person. It’s something that will change the face of the Earth, so … I don’t know. Since I’m not involved in anything related to the business development or the technology development at the industrial level, and since I don’t have any deeper knowledge on the direction in which things are going, I prefer not to say too much about it.
“About 10 or 15 top level managers are involved—surely there is Rossi and Darden, but I don’t know them all well. Is not of my concern. I think it’s right to keep things compartmentalized to avoid information leaks.
“In discussions on Internet forums everyone says they are slow, but I only see people really devoting all their resources and all their time to make this happen. So many people talk, but they don’t even know what it means to industrialize an object like that.”
* E-Cat X is an experimental high-temperature reactor based on Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat technology, which supposedly would produce both heat and light.
** Since mid-February 2015, Rossi and his US industrial partner Industrial Heat are running a one-year commercial trial on a customer’s site with a heat plant producing 1 MW. The plant is made up of four 250kW modules, each based on E-Cat technology. Unless something unexpected happens, the trial, which is controlled by a major independent third party certification institute, should be concluded by February or March 2016, and the results should then be presented.
Note: Fulvio Fabiani has signed NDAs regarding E-Cat technology with several parties, which obviously limited what he could say in this interview.
Mats Lewan
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This post was first published on Animpossibleinvention.com.
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