High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Energy Catalyzer (also called E-Cat) is a purported cold fusion or Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) heat source built by inventor Andrea Rossi with support from physicist Sergio Focardi. An Italian patent, which received a formal but not a technical examination, describes the apparatus as a "process and equipment to obtain exothermal reactions, in particular from nickel and hydrogen". Rossi and Focardi say the device works by infusing heated hydrogen into nickel, transmuting it into copper and producing heat. 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 to overcome this problem the application should have contained either experimental evidence or a firm theoretical basis in current scientific theories.