Agricultural phosphorus shortage made worse by biofuels?

This article will be published shortly in: "Australian Resources and Investment magazine".

Professor Christopher J. Rhodes, Director of Fresh-lands Environmental Actions, Reading UK. cjrhodes@fresh-lands.com

World rock phosphate production is set to peak by 2030. Since the material provides fertilizer for agriculture, the consequences are likely to be severe, and worsened by the increased production of biofuels, including those from algae.

Introduction.

The depletion of world rock phosphate reserves will restrict the amount of food that can be grown across the world, a situation that can only be compounded by the production of biofuels, including the potential large-scale generation of biodiesel from algae. The world population has risen to its present number of 7 billion in consequence of cheap fertilizers, pesticides and energy sources, particularly oil. Almost all modern farming has been engineered to depend on phosphate fertilizers, and those made from natural gas, e.g. ammonium nitrate, and on oil to run farm machinery and to distribute the final produce. A peak in worldwide production of rock phosphate is expected by 2030,¹ which lends fears over how much food the world will be able to grow in the future, against a rising number of mouths to feed. Consensus of opinion is that we are close to the peak in world oil production too. Phosphorus is an essential element in all living things, along with nitrogen and potassium. These are known collectively as, P, N, K, to describe micronutrients that drive growth in all plants and animal species, including humans. Global demand for phosphate rock is predicted to rise at 2.3% per year, but this is likely to increase in order to produce crops for biofuel production. As a rider to this, if the transition is made to cellulosic ethanol production, more phosphorus will be required still since there is less of the plant (the "chaff") available to return as plant rubble after the harvest, which is a traditional and natural provider of K and P to the soil.

World rock phosphate production amounts to around 140 million tonnes. In comparison, we would need 352 million tonnes of the mineral to grow sufficient algae to replace all the oil-derived fuels used in the world.² The US produces less than 40 million tonnes of rock phosphate annually, but to become self-sufficient in algal diesel would require around 88 million tonnes of the mineral. Hence, for the US, security of fuel supply could not be met by algae-to-diesel production using even all its indigenous rock phosphate output, and significant further imports would be needed. This is in addition to the amount of the mineral necessary to maintain existing agriculture. In principle, phosphate could be recycled from one batch of algae to the next, but how exactly this might be done remains a matter of some deliberation. e.g. The algae could be dried and burned, and the phosphate extracted from the resulting “ash”, or the algae could be converted to methane in a biodigester, releasing phosphate in the process. Clearly there are engineering and energy costs attendant to any and all such schemes and none has been adopted as yet.

Cleaning-up the Environment.

There is the further issue of the demand on freshwater, of which agriculture already struggles to secure enough to meet its needs, and in a sustainable picture of the future, supplies of water appear uncertain against the countenance of climate change. It is in the light of these considerations that algae/algal fuels have begun to look very appealing³, especially given the claimed very high yields that can be obtained per hectare as compared say with rapeseed and biodiesel. Conventional algae production can be combined with water clean-up strategies³, to remove N and P from agricultural run-off water and sewage effluent, both to prevent eutrophication (nutrient build-up in water), which causes algal blooms, and to conserve the precious resource of phosphate. Algae might also be “fed” with CO₂ from the smokestacks of power stations to reduce carbon emissions. The implementation of integrated strategies such as these, where the creation of a “carbon neutral” fuel is combined with pollution-reduction is thought to be the only way that the price of algal fuels can be brought down to a level comparable with conventional fuels refined from crude oil. As the price of oil rises inexorably, they are likely to become even more attractive. “Peak phosphate” is connected to “peak oil” since phosphate is mined using oil-powered machinery, and in the absence of sufficient phosphorus, we will be unable to feed the rising global human population, since modern industrialised farming depends on heavy inputs of phosphate, along with nitrogen fertilizers. Pesticides, too, derived chemically from crude oil, are essential, along with oil-refined fuels for farm machinery. It is, nonetheless, doubtful that the world’s liquid transportation fuel requirements can be met through standard methods of algae cultivation entirely,⁴ though fuel production on a smaller scale seems thus feasible. An analogy for the latter might be as growing algae in a “village pond” for use by a community of limited numbers.

No solution to “fuel crops versus food crops” problem.

It is salutary that there remains a competition between growing crops (algae) for fuel and those for food, even if not directly in terms of land, for the fertilizers that both depend upon. This illustrates for me the complex and interconnected nature of, indeed Nature, and which like any stressed chain, will ultimately converge its forces onto the weakest link in the “it takes energy to extract energy” sequence. It seems quite clear that with food production already stressed, the production of (algal) biofuels will never be accomplished on a scale anywhere close to matching current world petroleum fuel use (>20 billion barrels/annum). Thus, the days of a society based around personalized transport run on liquid fuels are numbered. We must reconsider too our methods of farming, to reduce inputs of fertilisers, pesticides and fuel. Freshwater supplies are also at issue, in the complex transition to a more localised age that uses its resources much more efficiently.

In contrast to fossil fuels, say, phosphorus can be recycled, but if phosphorus is wasted, there is no substitute for it. The evidence is that the world is using up its relatively limited supplies of phosphates in concentrated form. In Asia, agriculture has been enabled through returning animal and human manure to the soil, for example in the form of sewage sludge, and it is suggested that by the use of composting toilets, urine diversion, more efficient ways of using fertilizer and more efficient technology, the potential problem of phosphorus depletion might be circumvented. It all seems to add up to the same thing, that we will need to use less and more efficiently, whether that be fossil resources, or food products, including our own human waste. We are all taking a ride on spaceship earth, and depend mutually on her various provisions to us. Our number is now so great that we cannot maintain our current global profligacy. In the form of localised communities as the global village will devolve into by the inevitable reduction in transportation, such strategies would seem sensible to food (and some fuel) production at the local level. "Small is beautiful" as Schumacher wrote those many years ago, emphasising a system of "economics as if people mattered".⁵

And if we try to continue with business as usual?

There is a Hubbert-type analysis of human population growth which indicates that rather than rising to the putative “9 billion by 2050″ scenario, it will instead peak around the year 2025 at 7.3 billion, and then fall. It is probably significant too that that population growth curve fits very closely both with that for world phosphate production and another for world oil production. It seems to me highly indicative that it is the decline in resources that will underpin our decline in numbers as is true of any species: from a colony of human beings growing on the Earth, to a colony of bacteria growing on agar nutrient in a Petri-dish.

References.

(1) Rhodes, C.J. (2011) Science Progress 94, 323.

(2) Rhodes, C.J. http://ergobalance.blogspot.com/2012/02/achilles-heel-of-algal-biofuels-peak.html

(3) Rhodes, C.J. in Algal Fuels: Phycology, Geology, Biophotonics, Genomics and Nanotechnology, J.Seckbach (ed.), Springer, Dordrecht, in press.

(4) Rhodes, C.J. (2012) Science Progress 95, in press.
(5) Schumacher, E.F. (I 973) Small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered. Vintage, London.

Current Commentary: Energy from Nuclear Fusion – Realities, Prospects and Fantasies?

Also published in the journal Science Progress, of which I am an editor. It may be downloaded for free via this link: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/stl/sciprg/2012/00000095/00000001/art00005

Feasible fusion power – the carrot before the donkey?

When I was about 10, I recall hearing that nuclear fusion power would become a reality "in about thirty years". The estimate has increased steadily since then, and now, forty odd years on, we hear that fusion power will come on-stream "in about fifty years". So, what is the real likelihood of fusion-based power stations coming to our aid in averting the imminent energy crisis? Getting two nuclei to fuse is not easy, since both carry a positive charge and hence their natural propensity is to repel one another. Therefore, a lot of energy is required to force them together so that they can fuse. To achieve this, suitable conditions of extremely high temperature, comparable to those found in stars, must be met. A specific temperature must be reached in order for particular nuclei to fuse with one another. This is termed the "critical ignition temperature", and is around 400 million degrees centigrade for two deuterium nuclei to fuse, while a more modest 100 million degrees is sufficient for a deuterium nucleus to fuse with a tritium nucleus. For this reason, it is deuterium-tritium fusion that is most sought after, since it should be most easily achieved and sustained.
One disadvantage of tritium is that it is radioactive and decays with a half-life of about 12 years, and consequently, it exists naturally in only negligible amounts. However, tritium may be "bred" from lithium using neutrons produced in an initial deuterium-tritium fusion. Ideally, the process would become self-sustaining, with lithium fuel being burned via conversion to tritium, which then fuses with deuterium, releasing more neutrons. While not unlimited, there are sufficient known resources of lithium to fire a global fusion programme for about a thousand years, mindful that there are many other uses for lithium, ranging for various types of battery to medication for schizophrenics. The supply would be effectively limitless if lithium could be extracted from the oceans.

In a working scenario, some of the energy produced by fusion would be required to maintain the high temperature of the fuel such that the fusion process becomes continuous. At the temperature of around 100 - 300 million degrees, the deuterium/lithium/tritium mixture will exist in the form of a plasma, in which are nuclei are naked (having lost their initial atomic electron clouds) and are hence exposed to fuse with one another.

The main difficulty which bedevils maintaining a working fusion reactor which might be used to fire a power station is containing the plasma, a process usually referred to as "confinement" and the process overall as “magnetic confinement fusion” (MCF). Essentially, the plasma is confined in a magnetic bottle, since its component charged nuclei and electrons tend to follow the field of magnetic force, which can be so arranged that the lines of force occupy a prescribed region and are thus centralised to a particular volume. However, the plasma is a "complex" system that readily becomes unstable and leaks away. Unlike a star, the plasma is highly rarefied (a low pressure gas), so that the proton-proton cycle that powers the sun could not be thus achieved on earth, as it is only the intensely high density of nuclei in the sun's core that allows the process to occur sustainably, and that the plasma is contained within its own gravitational mass, and isolated within the cold vacuum of space.

In June 2005, the EU, France, Japan, South Korea, China and the U.S. agreed to spend $12 billion to build an experimental fusion apparatus (called ITER)¹ by 2014. It is planned that ITER will function as a research instrument for the following 20 years, and the knowledge gained will provide the basis for building a more advanced research machine. After another 30 years, if all goes well, the first commercial fusion powered electricity might come on-stream.

The Joint European Torus (JET)

I attended a fascinating event recently - a Cafe' Scientifique² meeting held in the town of Reading in South East England. I have also performed in this arena, talking about "What Happens When the Oil Runs Out?", which remains a pertinent question. This time it was the turn of Dr Chris Warrick from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy³ based near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, which hosts both the MAST (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) and the better known JET (Joint European Torus) experiments. In the audience was a veteran engineer/physicist who had worked on the pioneering ZETA⁴ experiment in the late 1950s, from which neutrons were detected leading to what proved later to be false claims that fusion had occurred, their true source being different versions of the same instability processes that had beset earlier machines.

Nonetheless, his comment was salient: "In the late 50s, we were told that fusion power was 20 years away and now, 50-odd years later it is maybe 60 years away." Indeed, JET has yet to produce a positive ratio of output power/input energy, and instability of the plasma is still a problem. Dr Warrick explained that while much of the plasma physics is now sorted-out, minor aberrations in the magnetic field allow some of the plasma to leak out, and if it touches the far colder walls of the confinement chamber, it simply "dies". In JET it is fusion of nuclei of the two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium that is being undertaken, a process that as noted earlier, requires a "temperature" of 100 million degrees.

I say "temperature" because the plasma is a rarified (very low pressure) gas, and hence the collisions between particles are not sufficiently rapid that the term means the same distribution of energy as occurs under conditions of thermal equilibrium. It is much the same as the temperatures that may be quoted for molecules in the atmospheric region known as the thermosphere which lies some 80 kilometers above the surface of the Earth. Here too, the atmosphere is highly rarified and thus derived temperatures refer to translational motion of molecules and are more usefully expressed as velocities. However expressed, at 100 million degrees centigrade, the nuclei of tritium and deuterium have sufficient translational velocity (have enough energy) that they can overcome the mutual repulsion arising from their positive charges and come close enough that they are drawn together by attractive nuclear forces and fuse, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process.

JET is not a small device, at 18 metres high, but bigger machines will be necessary before the technology is likely to give out more energy than it consumes. Despite the considerable volume of the chamber, it contains perhaps only one hundredth of a gram of gas, hence its very low pressure. There is another matter and that is how long the plasma and hence energy emission can be sustained. Presently it is fractions of a second but a serious "power station" would need to run for some hours. There is also the problem of getting useful energy from the plasma to convert into electricity even if the aforementioned and considerable problems can be overcome and a sustainable, large-scale plasma maintained.

The plan is to surround the chamber with a "blanket" of lithium with pipes running through it and some heat-exchanger fluid passing through them. The heated fluid would then pass on its heat to water and drive a steam-turbine, in the time-honoured fashion used for fossil fuel fired and nuclear power plants. Now my understanding is that this would not be lithium metal but some oxide material. The heat would be delivered in the form of very high energy neutrons that would be slowed-down as they encounter lithium nuclei on passing through the blanket. In principle this is a very neat trick, since absorption of a neutron by a lithium nucleus converts it to tritium, which could be fed back into the plasma as a fuel. Unlike deuterium, tritium does not exist is nature, being radioactive with a half life of about 12 years. However produced, either separately or in the blanket, lithium is the ultimate fuel source, not tritium per se. Deuterium does exist in nature but only to the extent of one part in about two thousand of ordinary hydrogen (protium) and hence the energy costs of its separation are not inconsiderable.

The neutron flux produced by the plasma is very high, and to enhance the overall breeding efficiency of lithium to tritium the reactor would be surrounded with a “lithium” blanket about three feet thick. The intense neutron flux will render the material used to construct the reactor highly radioactive, to the extent that it would not be feasible for operators to enter its vicinity for routine maintenance. The radioactive material will need to be disposed of similarly to the requirements for nuclear waste generated by nuclear fission, and hence fusion is not as "clean" as is often claimed. Exposure to radiation of many potential materials necessary to make the reactor, blanket, and other components such as the heat-exchanger pipes would render them brittle, and so compromise their structural integrity. There is also the possibility that the lithium blanket around the reactor might be replaced by uranium, so enabling the option of breeding plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

Providing a fairly intense magnetic field to confine the plasma (maybe 4 Tesla - similar to that in a hospital MRI scanner) needs power (dc not ac as switching the polarity of the field would cause the plasma to collapse) and large power-supply units containing a lot of metals including rare earths which are mined and processed using fossil fuels. The issue of rare earths is troublesome already, and whether enough of them can be recovered to meet existing planned wind and electric car projects is debatable, let alone that additional pressure should be placed upon an already fragile resource to build a first generation of fusion power stations.

World supplies of lithium are also already stressed, and hence getting enough of it not only to make blankets for fusion reactors and tritium production but also for the millions-scale fleet of electric vehicles needed to divert our transportation energy demand away from oil is probably a bridge too far, unless we try getting it from seawater, which takes far more energy than mining lithium minerals. The engineering requirements too will be formidable, however, most likely forcing the need to confront problems as yet unknown, and even according to the most favourable predictions of the experts, fusion power is still 60 years away, if it will arrive at all. Given that the energy crisis will hit hard long before then, I suggest we look to more immediate solutions, mainly in terms of energy efficiency, for which there is ample scope.

To quote again the ZETA veteran, "I wonder if maybe man is not intended to have nuclear fusion," and all in all, other than from solar energy I wonder if he is right. At any rate, garnering real electrical power from fusion is so far distant as to have no impact on the more immediately pressing fossil fuels crisis, particularly for oil and natural gas. Fusion Power is a long-range "holy grail" and part of the illusion that humankind can continue in perpetuity to use energy on the scale that it presently does. Efficiency and conservation are the only real means to attenuate the impending crisis in energy and resources.

UK and US join forces on laser-fusion energy⁵

The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have joined-forces with the US-based National Ignition Facility (NIF) to help provide energy using Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF), in which a pellet of fuel is heated using powerful lasers. Since the late 1950s, UK scientists have been attempting to achieve the fusion of hydrogen nuclei (tritium and deuterium) using magnetic confinement (MCF). The UK-based Joint European Torus (JET) is the largest such facility in the world and may be regarded as a prototype for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) based in France. So far, the "breakeven point" has not been reached, and the energy consumed by the plasma has yet to yield more energy than it takes to maintain it; moreover, there are problems of instability as already alluded to.

An alternative is Inertial confinement fusion (ICF), in which fusion of nuclei is initiated by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically in the form of a pellet containing deuterium and tritium contained in a device called a hohlraum (hollow space or cavity) using an extremely powerful laser. Energy is delivered from the laser to the inner surface of the hohlraum which produces high-energy X-rays. The impingement of these X-rays on the target causes its outer layer to explode, and by a Newtonian counter reaction, drives the inner substance of the target inwards, compressing it massively. Shock-waves are also produced that travel inward through the target.

If the shock-waves are intense enough, the fuel at the target centre is heated and compressed to the extent that nuclear fusion can occur. The energy released by the fusion reactions then heats the surrounding fuel, within which atomic nuclei may further begin to fuse. In comparison with "breakeven" in MCF, in ICF a state of "ignition" is sought, in which a self-sustaining chain-reaction is attained that consumes a significant portion of the fuel. The fuel pellets typically contain around 10 milligrams of fuel, and if all of that were consumed it would release an energy equivalent to that from burning a barrel of oil. In reality, only a small proportion of the fuel is "burned". That said, "ignition" would yield far more energy than the breakeven point value.

At the NIF it is hoped to have ignition within a couple of years, or far sooner than the carrot before the donkey "50 years away" for MCF, although there is much to be done yet. A single shot from the world's most powerful laser at NIF is reported to have released "a million billion neutrons" and for a tiny fraction of a second produced more power than was being consumed in the entire world, although to achieve ignition this would need to be increased a thousand-fold.

A real breakthrough, no doubt, but as with MCF, how long before this technology can be fabricated into actual power stations? There are many nontrivial ancillary challenges too, especially the secondary procedure of actually getting the energy out of the reactor into a useful form, i.e. heat to drive steam-turbines as with all other kinds of thermal power stations, to generate electricity. This is very complex and untested technology compared, say, to coal- and gas-fired or nuclear power plants. Actual fusion power is still at best many decades away and the concept should not be thrown as a red-herring that the world's impending energy crisis has been abated.

Most immediately, what fusion in any of its manifestations does not address is the problem of providing liquid fuels as conventional supplies of oil and gas decline, and it is this which is the greatest and most pressing matter to be dealt with, against a backdrop of mere years not a luxury of decades.

"Cold fusion" proven?

I remember well the phenomenon of "cold fusion" as it was dubbed.⁶ This was back in 1989 when Professors Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman claimed that they could extract 40% more energy in the form of heat than they had input in the form of electricity into an electrochemical cell containing deuterium oxide ("heavy water"). They proposed the deuterium nuclei had undergone a nuclear fusion. The potential implications of this were staggering: that rather than trying to mimic the massively high temperature conditions of some hundred million degrees or so as are necessary to overcome the strong Coulombic forces that tend to keep two positively charged nuclei apart, as in "hot" plasma-fusion, it was feasible to somehow overcome this barrier such that the process could occur at room temperature.

Pons and Fleischman became largely dismissed as charlatans when many other research groups around the world found themselves unable to reproduce their results and confirm their claims, which were accordingly dismissed as unfounded. However, note the comment below to the effect that the phenomenon has since been confirmed in many highly credible laboratories around the world. I remember there were some really quite bizarre effects found by other workers - for example, one young man was killed when a cold-fusion cell exploded while he was trying to demonstrate the phenomenon of "fusion in a test-tube" as the popular press described it.⁷ So, something real was happening, fusion or not. A senior scientist and champion of cold-fusion, Dr Eugene Mallove, was murdered during the furore, which incited a number of conspiracy theories at the time.⁸

The matter never entirely went away and I recall reading an article either in The Guardian or New Scientist (or both) to the effect that a scientist in the U.S. had claimed to have demonstrated fusion when he exposed hexadeuteroacetone (that's C₃D₆O as opposed to the more common C₃H₆O) to ultrasound. He was vilified by the scientific community, as I recall and its dogma that cold fusion did not exist and could not as there is no theory to explain it.⁹ However, a professor in Japan has apparently demonstrated that if deuterium gas is passed into a reactor containing composite palladium-zirconium oxide (Pd-ZrO₂) nanoparticles, Helium-4 is produced (a sure sign of fusion?), the temperature of the reactor rises and its centre remains warm for 50 hours.¹⁰

If this is true it is absolutely fascinating and perhaps some accepted scientific laws will need to be substantially modified, as has been said. However, from a practical point of view, that of dealing with the energy crunch, even if cold fusion is a reality, have we found our salvation? I don't think so, frankly. I have not seen any figures for how much Pd and deuterium gas are used to run this cell and how much excess heat is produced. However, I have yet to be convinced that the energy needed to produce deuterium gas (by the electrolysis of deuterium oxide - "heavy water") and to make enough heavy water in the first place to feed the electrolysis units, will be offset by the final thermal output of the "fusion" reactors. Then there is the matter of availability of palladium metal, the energy for its fabrication into the composite nanoparticles and so on, and how would the heat energy be extracted usefully, say to heat buildings or drive electricity turbines? The problem of energy extraction is even worse for "hot" fusion, from a plasma that even if it can be sustained, would produce ultra-high energy neutrons that no known materials are yet able to withstand, from which to extract thermal energy.

Energy-Catalyzer¹¹

The issue of “cold fusion” has resurfaced in the guise of the Energy Catalyzer. This is also referred to as E-Cat and is claimed as a Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) heat source, and is the creation of Andrea Rossi who is an inventor. Much has been written on this subject in the popular press, and the following highlights are taken from a useful wikipedia article¹¹, containing original references which I have read and validated as being accurate. A patent was approved in Italy on April 6, 2011 by Rossi and physicist Sergio Focardi which designates the E-Cat as "process and equipment to obtain exothermal reactions, in particular from nickel and hydrogen". Now this is where it gets interesting: Rossi and Focardi say the device works by infusing heated hydrogen into nickel, transmuting it into copper and producing heat. However, an international patent application has received an unfavorable international preliminary report on patentability because it seemed to "offend against the generally accepted laws of physics and established theories" and it is concluded that the application is lacking in either experimental evidence or a firm theoretical basis that accords with current scientific understanding. The device has been demonstrated to a number of invited audiences, but it has not been independently verified. Writing on Forbes, Mark Gibbs has concluded that: "until a verifiably objective analysis is conducted by an independent third party that confirms the results match the claims, there’s no real news".

Evaluation of the device

The University of Bologna, where Focardi is an emeritus professor, has made it very clear that it has not been involved at all in the device so far, but will begin experiments on the E-Cat as soon as the contract signed with Andrea Rossi's Italian company (EFA Srl) comes into force. On November 23, 2011, the Corriere della Sera reported on its Bologna edition that the University's contract with Rossi is expected to start "within a few weeks", and that the results of the research would be published in scientific journals, possibly "by summer [2012]". As Ny Teknik reports, Peter Ekström, a lecturer at the Department of Nuclear Physics at Lund University in Sweden, points out that a chemical reaction is unlikely to provide sufficient energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier, that gamma rays are absent, that there is no explanation for the origin of the extra energy, that the expected radioactivity after fusing a proton with ⁵⁸Ni is not detected, the occurrence of 11% iron in the spent fuel is unexplained, that the 10% copper in the spent fuel has coincidentally the same isotopic ratios as naturally occurring copper, and that there is no unstable copper isotope in the spent fuel suggesting that only stable isotopes are produced. Kjell Aleklett, who is a physics professor at Uppsala University, said the proportion of copper was too high for any known nuclear reaction involving nickel, and significantly the copper had the same isotopic ratio as natural copper (implying that this is where it came from rather than any process of transmutation).

Actual demonstrations of the E-Cat

Two such demonstrations were given in January and February and others as summarised in the list below. Reporting on the January demonstration, Benjamin Radford, an analyst on the Discovery Channel wrote: "If this all sounds fishy to you, it should,” and that "In many ways cold fusion is similar to perpetual motion machines. The principles defy the laws of physics, but that doesn’t stop people from periodically claiming to have invented or discovered one.”

• On the 29^th of March, 2011, two Swedish physicists, Hanno Essén and Sven Kullander witnessed a test of a smaller version of the Energy Catalyzer, which ran for six hours. It was claimed that a net power output of 4.4 kW had been achieved with a total energy output of about 25 kWh. An analysis of the unused powder showed it to be pure nickel while that taken from the reactor (reported as used for 2.5 months) contained 10 percent copper and 11 percent iron. Kullander said that the presence of copper is "a proof that nuclear reactions took place in the process”. However, other researchers, Ekström and Aleklett concluded that since that copper had the same isotopic ratios as natural copper, and that the proportion of it is too high, it most likely arises from contamination. Significantly, the formation of iron is not mentioned at all in the patent. Essen and Kullander were guarded in their evaluation, writing that: "Since we do not have access to the internal design of the central fuel container... we can only make very general comments.” Essén later stated "I am still very uncertain about this.”
• A test run of the E-cat was made on the 6^th of October, 2011, which reportedly lasted for about eight hours from which Roland Pettersson, an emeritus Associate Professor from the University of Uppsala, said: "I'm convinced that this works, but there is still room for more measurements".

Potential commercial exploitation

A Greek company, Defkalion, had intended to build a heating plant based on the Energy Catalyzer, but the deal fell through, although the company has announced that they plan to fabricate a similar device. Rossi made a deal in May 2011 with AmpEnergo in Ohio, to receive royalties on sales of licenses and products built on the Energy Catalyzer throughout North and South America. It was reported that an engineer Domenico Fioravanti had tested a1 MW power plant based on the Energy Catalyzer on the 28th of October, 2011, although the name of the client was not disclosed. Fioravanti claimed that over a period of 5.5 hours the plant produced 2,635 kWh, which corresponds to an average power output of 479 kW. Independent observers were not permitted, but also the plant remained connected to a power supply throughout the test, purportedly to run the fans and the water pumps. It is reported that the customer took possession of the plant afterwards. Rossi claims to have orders for thirteen more 1 MW units which are on sale for $2 million each, in addition to the unnamed customer who has the one from the 28^th of October test. Focus, a popular science magazine in Italy, has stated that 12 additional units are to be provided to the same, undisclosed customer. Rossi commented: "We are building a 13 MW thermal plant, made of 13 plants such as the one you saw on October 28th: but it's a military research and I can't reveal any further detail, not the name, nor the place, nor the nationality of the customer".

Four Swedish entrepreneurs, two of them particle physicists have a website Ecat.com set-up to sell the device from. In response to a question about sceptical commentary regarding the device, one of the physicists, Magnus Holm, replied that "Until [Rossi] makes an independent test, there is obviously a small chance that it does not work. We are willing to take that risk because it’s such an amazing technology if it works". When asked if he was "contributing to fraud", Holm said: "We are not engaged in any deception, and I do not think Rossi is engaged in any fraud either. If it would turn out that it does not work, in spite of everything, I would think it is about self-deception". This is all quite fascinating and all I can say is: watch this space.

References.
(1) http://www.iter.org/
(2) http://www.cafescientifique.org/
(3) http://www.ccfe.ac.uk/
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZETA_%28fusion_reactor%29

(5) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14842720

(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
(7) http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf080/sf080u19.htm
(8) http://www.wanttoknow.info/eugenemallove
(9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_fusion
(10) http://www.rexresearch.com/arata/arata.htm
(11) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer

The Authors’ Show: Chris Rhodes being interviewed by Danielle Hampson about his novel, “University Shambles”, 10.00 PDT (6.00 PM, UK Summer Time) May 10th, 2012.

The following is a transcript of an interview with Danielle Hampson on The Author's Show, about my novel, University Shambles.

There will be a link available shortly.

DH: In just a few sentences, how would you summarize your book?

CR: It’s about one man’s naked ambition and hunger for recognition. This is probably not an uncommon scenario in many walks of life, but the hero of this book, Charles Rae, happens to be a lecturer working at a mid-ranking university whose boss refuses to promote him on grounds of his youth. He’s 32. Almost as an answer to some silent prayer, one day his phone rings and he is head-hunted with the offer of a full-professorship at the Evergreen Epstein University, a former polytechnic. So, in a spirit of elation, he moves up to the city of Evergreen to take the post, but this proves to be a poisoned chalice and his life steadily and completely unravels.

DH: How true to life is the plot of University Shambles?

CR: Oddly enough, someone who had read the book said to me: “I didn’t know you were at “X” University.” I said, “I wasn’t.” “Oh,” she said, “it’s just that some of the events and characters remind me of...” And this is the reaction I have had from people working at universities across the spectrum – from the very top, down to somewhere near the bottom of the league - so I guess it’s pretty true to life across the board of modern universities.

DH: How have universities changed over the years?

CR: The major change is that in 1992, the British government decided to re-label the polytechnics as universities and quadruple the number of students going to somewhere called a “university”. So, when I went in the late 1970s the proportion was about 10% going into higher education, now it’s around 45%.

DH: Was the expansion of the British university system, in 1992, a good thing?

CR: No, it wasn’t. The only reason the government did it was to cover-up the true level of youth unemployment. So, many of those who would have been classified as unemployed, instead ended up in education and training, which is far less embarrassing for a government that wants to get re-elected.

DH: 20 years on from then, how has the scheme unfolded?

CR: 20 years on, good polytechnics, which dealt more with practical training, local industry etc. have been destroyed and turned into “bottom league” universities. But simultaneously, the more established universities have been infected by the bureaucracy that did indeed beset the polytechnics, so both systems have suffered.

DH: You have written the novel in the style of a black comedy, but are you trying to make some more serious points about higher education and where it is/should be going?

CR: Yes, it is a black comedy, or satire, but I am intending to reveal the university system, to the unaware and the unwary, for what it has become, and to show that it urgently needs overhauling to be of any use.

DH: What is your opinion about the introduction of "tuition fees" for British students?

CR: Well, this was all part of the huge expansion in student numbers. Essentially the system became so big that the government couldn’t afford to fund it, so the costs of the expansion had to be borne by its “customers”, as students are now called. So, now they all pay tuition fees, or at least bear the debt of them, until they earn above... I think it’s about £23,000 a year. Now universities are fined if they recruit too many students, in an effort to keep the government’s own costs down.

DH: You refer to "bums on seats" funding for universities - can you explain what this means in practice?

CR: “Bums on seats”. Well, in British slang a bum is a bottom – a posterior, rather than the American term for a vagrant - and so the term refers to the number of students sitting in lecture rooms in universities. The funding is given to universities per student, and so the more bums on seats the more money they get. A corollary to this is that little consideration is given to what subjects are being studied. Clearly, with a majority studying subjects that are deemed trendy or sexy, but of limited value in getting a job afterwards, like media studies, forensics, sports science and so on, there will be many unemployed graduates in the future.

DH: You are a little scathing about science funding, almost implying that some very expensive research is perhaps frivolous. Do you think that some of it is?

CR: A massive proportion of the science budget is spent on things like particle physics and astronomy. Now, while this is all cutting-edge stuff in terms of the acquisition of human knowledge, the world is facing some considerable and unprecedented challenges. For example, how we are to provide energy in the future with a decline in fossil fuels; how are we going to feed a population growing from 7 billion, and indeed to address a need to teach more practical skills to the young, as civilization becomes necessarily less global and more local, as cheap oil supplies decline? I think resources should be targeted toward these matters. The rest is a luxury that we won’t have for much longer if we don’t get our house in order to face the future in a sustainable way.

DH: What do you feel are the main differences, if any, between British and American universities?

CR: In a way the two are becoming more similar. Traditionally in the U.S., more students went to college – i.e. into higher education – and it was quite normal to “work your way through college”, if your parents weren’t well off, to pay tuition fees and to live. Maybe this is still the case. It also took longer, and a BS is worth less than a British B.Sc. An American MS is closer in standard to a U.K. degree. As I noted earlier, in 1992 the British university system was vastly expanded so that around 45% of the young now go to a “university” of some kind, and they pay tuition fees. When I went to university, I got funding – a grant – from the local authority, but at that time only around 10% went, so the system was affordable. Now it isn’t. So, we have moved from an elitist system of higher education to a mass higher education system, like the U.S. has.

DH: There are now record numbers of unemployed university graduates. Do you think it might have been better if some of them had not gone to university?

CR: The level of graduate unemployment in Britain is a real scandal, and a consequence of this poorly thought through bums on seats expansion of the higher education sector. Put it this way, if you do a degree in something sensible like chemistry, engineering, modern languages and so on, and study at a good university, you will be in a much better position to get a job than if you study something undemanding, but unmarketable, at somewhere like the Evergreen Epstein University - the fictitious university described in my novel. And the terrible thing is that these students will carry a debt of around £30,000 ($50,000) for the privilege, at the end of it.

Indeed, it would be far better if many young people, rather than going to “uni” as they call it, went out and learned a trade, like being a plumber, carpenter, electrician etc. Much better to be a trained plumber, in demand and earning a good living, than an unemployed media studies graduate.

DH: Do you think that in their present form, universities meet the needs of society?

CR: No, I don’t. It’s a complex problem, because the needs of society will change profoundly, especially so in a world whose resources – particularly those of crude oil - are unable to maintain a global economy as we know it now. As we move back to more locally-based communities, because we won’t have cheap transportation on the scale to which we’ve become accustomed, we’ll need far fewer “universities”, and “academic” education, but much more in the way of practical skills.

DH: Do you think that we have seen the last of the major changes to universities, or can you envisage a further overhaul of the system?

CR: Not by a long chalk! The major driver for change - in British universities, anyway - is the proposed cuts in their funding under the government’s “austerity measures”, to try and cut the debt incurred through them having to bail-out the banks, after the 2008 crash. In a nutshell, universities, and consequently, individual courses and departments, will have to be financially viable, or quite simply they will go to the wall. Now this may well tie-in with the former polytechnics to some extent going back to their roots, and delivering more practical skills and providing training for local industry. Since it is teaching that is set to be cut hardest, and these are predominantly teaching-institutions rather than research-based universities, this is the only way real-life versions of the Evergreen Epstein University, of my novel, formerly the Evergreen Polytechnic, will be able to survive.

DH: What is the message or moral that you are trying to disseminate to the reader?

CR: Well, the book is a work of fiction, but not really. I believe the term is a roman a clef, a novel with a key. So, beyond giving a reader a good laugh - if a slightly hollow one because the kind of things that happen in it are common to any badly managed corporate organisation, not only universities - my intention is to point out that the university system is largely not fit for purpose and that rather than continuing on this bums on seats path, where “graduates” are produced in great number, irrespective of whether they are going to be of any use or not, the government needs to act to say, “OK, how many media studies graduates do we need, how many pharmacists, psychologists and so on, in terms of the future that we envisage for the nation?”

DH: Other than of course selling your book, what do you hope to accomplish with it?

CR: To illustrate the need for a complete overhaul of higher education - certainly in Britain - to a properly functioning system that meets the needs of the nation, rather than maintaining the pretence that every young person should be a "graduate" and every academic a "full-professor" irrespective of their talent or actual level of scholarship. There are plenty of “professors” – that’s full-professor in US parlance – mostly in the ex-polytechnics, with practically no published work. Sadly, this appears to be all part of the same trend, leading to a high level of graduate unemployment, low standards and a generation of young people with neither sufficient practical nor academic skills to earn a living, and bearing a huge debt for the "privilege". Rather than the government target of 50% of our young becoming "graduates", we need more electricians, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, farmers, gardeners and bricklayers. Many of our "universities" should become technical colleges again, to provide practical training of exactly this kind.

DH: How have readers responded so far to your book?

CR: Actually, it’s been very well received. It has some excellent reviews on Amazon. It seems to be the case that anyone working in, or familiar with, universities enjoys the book as a black comedy, but its message of “be careful what you wish for” and “those whom the gods wish to destroy they first grant their wishes” applies equally to all ill-managed corporate organisations. The perilous "greasy pole" is everywhere.

DH: You’re an experienced writer, so is it safe to assume there will be a next one? 

CR: Well, yes, you can assume that. I am working on a couple of themes, for example what becomes of the hero of University Shambles, Charles Rae, and we find him 10 years later, in quite a different setting. In fact the Evergreen Epstein University did Charles a favour by destroying his former career, and he is doing well in a quite different sphere of life. So there’s no need for the reader to worry about him! But I’m also working on another, more factual, book about how we might adapt as a civilization in response to resources shortages, and devolve back to a globe of local communities, from the present global village. I have also published my first children’s picture book, Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus, which aims to get environmental ideas over to kids – not in any kind of preachy way, but to be a lot of fun! I’ve also written some poetry.

DH: How can readers find your book?

CR: The book “University Shambles” is available as a hard print copy (what we call hardback in the UK) and also as an eBook/Kindle version. If you go to my website, http://www.rba.co.uk/UniversityShambles/ there are links to get either printed or Kindle versions, and you can even get a copy with a dedication and signed by the author, if you so wish.