by Leander Kahney
3:00 a.m. Aug. 7, 2000 PDT
For the last six years, a small startup company in Youngstown, Ohio, has been promising to bring to market a revolutionary engine that would provide unlimited power for free, requiring no fuel and producing no pollution.
Too good to be true? Well, it seems so.
Entropy Systems now says it has no immediate plans to release Entropy Engines, despite raising about $3.5 million from private investors and hawking the breakthrough technology in the media since at least 1994. Instead, Sanjay Amin, the engine? inventor and Entropy System? CEO, said he will continue to develop the technology away from the limelight while concentrating on a new venture: Abika.com, an online e-book retailer.
According to the story Amin has told to numerous reporters and potential investors over the years, Entropy Engines will revolutionize the energy industry. The engines require no fuel, relying only on ambient heat energy in the atmosphere, which they would efficiently convert into power.
Entropy Engines would power all kinds of devices, from cooling systems to generators and automobiles. They would be free to run and wouldn't create any pollution, directly or indirectly.
In September last year, Amin grabbed international headlines with the announcement that he was on the verge of releasing the first Entropy Engines for boats, lawnmowers, and electrical generators. Amin claimed to have developed a working prototype and that the first products would be on sale by early 2000. At the time, he planned an outboard motor for small boats, simply because it was the easiest market to break into, he said. Later refinements of the engine would generate more power, possibly enough to run a car, he said.
Despite his fantastic claims, Amin appeared to have the backing of respected academics and savvy businessmen. The company, which was incorporated in 1994, was launched with the help of Youngstown State University's Cushwa Center for Entrepreneurship, with the center? director, Charles Cushwa, an early cheerleader. According to Amin, he raised close to $3.5 million from 49 private investors in three rounds of financing.
The technology had been patented in the United States, Europe, and Australia, Amin said, and tested by experts at the Ford Motor Company, Youngstown, Purdue, and Pennsylvania State. Not surprisingly, given the claims, Amin? Entropy Engine drew a lot of attention, generating articles in newspapers and magazines around the world. But now that 2000 has rolled around and Entropy Engines are still not on the market, Wired News contacted Amin for an update on the company's plans.
After what appeared to be some initial reluctance to talk, Amin said last September? announcement had been premature and that the Entropy Engine still wasn't ready for prime time. He want to quietly continue the research,·he said. He'l make announcements when it's ready for release.
Amin said in the meantime he had a new venture, Abika.com, which markets and distributes free, advertising-supported e-books. Dominic Bitonte, a former director of the company and an early investor, said he wasn't concerned about the money he sunk into the company. He didn't invest any money that would change my life if I lost it, he said. I'm willing to wait.
Amin said apart from a few impatient investors, most of the company's backers share Bitonte's attitude. The majority of them are very supportive, he said. A lot of them want the technology to work because it has so many benefits. A lot of them take the view that no matter what happens, we want the technology to work.
Amin said the academic community, unlike his financiers, refused to indulge his claims, and its hostility surprised him. I expected there would be some resistance, he said, ?ut there was an emotional resistance. They were saying this is like blasphemy, you cant say that kind of thing.
Amin said he offered numerous scientists the opportunity to test his prototypes in their own labs, but no one took up his offer. His engine has been tested by professional engineers, he said, but he was unable to provide their names and contact details because of restrictive contracts he had signed.
However, Gerhard Bruhn, a mathematician at the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, said a careful analysis of Amin? theory proves there are several elementary flaws of calculation. If you calculate the amount of heat correctly that is absorbed by the machine during one cycle, you get the result zero. Thus there is no heat energy that could be converted to mechanical energy by the machine,· Bruhn said in an email.
Bruhn said he twice approached Amin with his findings, but the inventor has not responded. Amin said he did in fact reply to Bruhn but, nonetheless, Bruhn's calculations were full of holes. He did not consider all the parameters,·Amin said.
Eric Krieg, the president of PHACT (Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking), said Amin? claims violate the laws of physics. There is some small chance that the long-accepted laws of physics are really wrong,·said Krieg, However, before throwing them out, I'l need to see a lot better proof than the word of someone hoping to get rich. or hundreds of years, there have been people who claim a source of free energy. Amin is only one them. History shows many break the law, but never the laws of nature.
October 22, 2002