On 08/24/2016 12:29 PM, David Roberson wrote:
Stephen you are assuming a design that is far different than Rossi's
previous devices. For most of the recent demonstrations Rossi had his
thermal generation components contained within a large thinned mass.
The incoming water essentially fell into a big boxy outer structure
and came into contact with the inner section at a multitude of
locations where it extracted heat through the fins.
But the shape really doesn't matter. It's just thermodynamics. As long
as it's a flow-through boiler the same conclusions must apply -- the
water comes in <somewhere>, flows along <some path>, turns to steam at
<some spacial location>, flows along <some path> as steam, and exits the
reactor. Whether it's a big box, a tea-kettle shaped vessel, or a
collection of pipes or a thin, wide sheet, there still must be a
continuous flow from the input to the output.
And there will be a line of demarcation between water and steam, with,
one may expect, higher temperatures on the steam side.
If (flow_rate * heat-of-vaporization + flow_rate *
heat-to-raise-to-boiling) is not /exactly/ matched to the power
generated, either the effluent will be water (or water mixed with
steam), or it will be superheated steam, but in either case, as long as
the power level and flow rate are constant, the output temperature would
be expected to be fixed, and the "boiler" will contain at least some
liquid water.
You misunderstood my point about immediate boiling.
Sorry! I see that now, I think.
I just wanted to express the thought that only a small volume of water
would remain in liquid form within the unit. Since it is assumed that
more heat is generated than needed to boil all of the water entering,
it becomes apparent that the temperature of the ECAT must rise and not
remain at the boiling point. This increase in temperature can be
detected and _*therefore a thermal loop can control it*_.
Yes. But no such loop has ever been described. From the beginning
there has been talk of how that could be done .... but it didn't come
from Rossi, only from those trying to explain the amazing coincidence of
the "dry steam" effluent never rising much above boiling.
And AFAIK _*no*_ reason has ever been put forward to explain /why/ you'd
want to keep the "dry steam" at the boiling point, rather than letting
it go up to, say, 120 C, which would totally eliminate any question of
whether it was "really steam" or just slightly pressurized water. If
the temp had been 120C back in 2011 we wouldn't be having this
discussion today. (But to push the temperature that high, the Rossi
reactors would have had to actually work as claimed.)
Also, the vapor can be super heated by the additional hot surface on
its way to the outside port. And, indeed this is exactly the scenario
that could be used to generate dry steam if properly employed.
Yes. Exactly. But it would be very unlikely for it to stay within a
few degrees of boiling, which is the whole point.
Not once has Rossi demonstrated "dry steam" production with the steam
temperature sufficiently hotter than boiling to rule out the possibility
that the "steam" was mostly (by mass) liquid water.
So, in my attempt to understand how the gauges might be reading in
error I must assume that the liquid is not being boiled off within
each of the 24 or ? devices, but instead leaves in the liquid form
which flashes into a liquid, vapor combination. If the complete
filling of the ECAT portions by water does not take place then Jed's
position is undermined pretty much as you are describing.
Sorry, I didn't follow the bit about Jed's position being undermined if
the devices are not full of water.
To produce wet steam you need droplets of water exiting the device, but
that doesn't really require that the device be entirely filled with
water. Tea kettles are treacherous models for analysing the ecat (since
they're fill-once-and-boil rather than flow-through) but a tea kettle is
still informative in this case: A half full kettle can still produce
wet steam. It all depends on the arrangement of the heating element and
how much contact it has with the steam/water mixture after it leaves the
surface of the liquid water.
Ultimately, the geometry of the boiler doesn't matter. The issue is
/_how_ is the temperature prevented from rising significantly above
boiling?/ If we're assuming the things actually work as claimed and
trying to understand them in those terms, then speculation about how it
/could have been done/ is irrelevant -- how does Rossi claim it was
done? AFAIK he ignores the issue and provides no explanation.
And, there is the related and equally important question, _/why/_/is the
temperature prevented from rising significantly above boiling?/ One
possible answer to this is all too obvious, and unless you can think of
an alternative, I'll go with, "/It's kept just above boiling to
obfuscate the question of whether it's actually dry steam or not/". IOW
it's kept at boiling to make it easy to fake the results.
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen A. Lawrence <sa...@pobox.com>
To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Wed, Aug 24, 2016 11:58 am
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation
On 08/24/2016 11:19 AM, David Roberson wrote:
That is not entirely true because it requires a perfect balance of
heat generation and water input flow. For example, if 1% extra
liquid water is continually added to the ECAT heating chamber it
will eventually overflow and begin to flow out of the port as a
combination of vapor and liquid water leading to wet steam. This
would take place at a constant temperature which would make
thermal control difficult.
On the other hand, if 1% less liquid water flows into the chamber
then eventually all of the coolant will become vaporized
immediately upon entry.
No, it will not vaporize "immediately upon entry". Assuming the design
is anything like what I believe earlier ecats were set up with, you've
got a reactor chamber and a water jacket, not unlike the arrangement
on an internal combustion engine. (Or it could be set up as an old
fashioned steam locomotive boiler, with multiple pipes running
_through_ the reactor chamber, but it's the same idea either way --
the water _flows_ through a heated aqueduct of some sort, from one end
to the other, growing hotter as it travels; it does /not/ just sit in
a "chamber" until it boils away.)
It will flow in as water, be heated to boiling as it traverses the
water jacket (or pipe, if you prefer), vaporize at some point (and
some /particular location/ in the duct work) so that it initially
becomes a mixture of steam and water droplets, and then continue to be
heated, as steam, as it traverses the remainder of the jacket. The
parts of the chamber being cooled by steam may be hotter than the
parts where there's liquid water in the jacket but since the reactor
chamber itself is above boiling anyway, the difference may not be all
that significant.
*In fact, this is **/exactly/**the scenario which must be taking place
**/if the effluent is dry steam, as claimed./* After the water hits
boiling, in order to be totally dry, the steam must be superheated to
some extent as it continues to traverse the _heated_ conduit.
There's a fixed amount of power coming from the reactor chamber, so
the effluent temperature should also be fixed -- it won't just rise
arbitrarily. It just shouldn't be /exactly at boiling/, which
implies an exact match between power provided and power consumed by
vaporizing the water, despite the lack of either active power level
control or flow rate control.
It might be possible to adjust the power generation downwards
under this condition since the chamber would likely begin to rise
in temperature without adequate coolant. Here, the temperature
feedback would be asked to take over control of the process.
Earlier you made a big point that feedback level control was
obvious due to having so many fine, controllable, accurate pumps
in the system. Do you now believe that level control is not being
used in the system? I am not totally convinced that feedback
water level control is not part of the main plan once everything
settles down in production. That control technique would go a
long way toward ensuring dry steam is always generated.
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net>
To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Wed, Aug 24, 2016 8:04 am
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation
You don't need "active feedback." The steam escapes the reactor
shortly after being formed
On 8/24/2016 12:33 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
On 08/24/2016 12:03 AM, David Roberson wrote:
As I have stated, if the steam is truly dry then plenty of
power is being supplied to the customer. If the ERV is
mistaken that the steam is dry then I.H. is likely correct.
If everyone accepts that the true pressure of the steam is
atmospheric while the temperature is 102.8 C then it is dry.
Unless there's some active feedback mechanism keeping the
temperature of the effluent between 100 and 103 C, it's hard
to believe the effluent is dry steam. The heat capacity of
steam is so small compared with the latent heat of
vaporization one would expect the temperature of (dry) steam
in the closed system to be driven well above boiling -- not
just barely over it.
This has been the problem with Rossi's steam demos since the
beginning: There is no feedback mechanism to keep the
temperature barely above boiling, yet it never goes more than
a couple degrees above. Either there's feedback nailing the
power output to the level needed to /just exactly/ vaporize
the water (with essentially no heat left over to superheat the
steam), or there is feedback nailing the water flow rate to
the be just fast enough to consume all the heat from the
system in vaporizing the water, or there is a miraculous
coincidence between the heat produced and the water flow rate.
We /know/ there's no feedback controlling the flow rate,
because that was rock steady.
No mention has ever been made of any feedback mechanism fixing
the reaction rate to the steam temperature, so short of
fantasizing about something Rossi never said he did, we have
no reason to believe such a thing exists. In fact we don't
even know that the reaction (if there is a reaction) can be
controlled with the precision needed to keep the output
temperature so close to boiling -- and we also have no reason
to believe anyone would even /want/ to do that.
So, the only conclusion that makes sense in this situation is
that the "feedback" keeping the temperature almost exactly at
boiling is provided by water mixed with the steam, and that
consequently the steam must be very wet.
But that is the root of the problem; both parties do not
agree that this is true. Only one can be right in this
case. Also, there is no law of nature that ensures that
what the ERV states is true. He may be confused by the
location of gauges, etc.
AA, Engineer48 claims that the pumps are all manually set
and not under automatic control according to his picture.
If true, that would eliminate the feedback level control
that was discussed earlier. It is my opinion that some
form of automatic level control is required in order to
produce a stable system that prevents liquid filling or
dying out of the CATS. This is an important factor that
both of the parties should address.
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net>
To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Tue, Aug 23, 2016 10:59 pm
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation
Apparently the ERV measured 102.8 C @ atmospheric
pressure. That is dry steam.
That implies the customer used steam at a negative pressure.
On 8/23/2016 8:50 PM, Bob Cook wrote:
Dave--
The steam table indicates a condition of equilibrium
between the liquid phase and the gaseous phase of
water. If the conditions are 1 bar at a temperature
above the 99.9743 there is no liquid phase in
equilibrium with the steam (gas) phase. The gas is
phase is at 102 degrees and is said to be super heated.
The steam tables tell you nothing about liquid phase
carry-over in a dynamic flowing system. Normally
there would be a moisture separator in the system to
assure no carry-over.
Bob
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com>
*Sent:* Monday, August 22, 2016 9:27:19 PM
*To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com
*Subject:* Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation
Dave--
Where did the pressure of 15.75 psi abs come from? I
thought the pressure of the 102C dry steam (assumed)
was 1 atmos.--not 15.75 abs.
I think your assumed conditions above 1 atmos. were
never measured.
Bob Cook
Bob, I used a steam table calculator located at
http://www.tlv.com/global/TI/calculator/steam-table-pressure.html
to obtain my data points.
According to that source, 14.6954 psi abs is 0 bar at
a temperature of 99.9743 C degrees.
At 102 C degrees the pressure is shown as 15.7902 psi
absolute.
Also, at 15.75 psi abs you should be at 101.928 C. I
must have accidentally written the last digit in error
for some reason.
Does this answer your first question?
You are correct about the assumed pressures above 1
atmosphere not being measured directly. I admit that
I rounded off the readings a bit, but the amount of
error resulting from the values I chose did not appear
to impact the answers to a significant degree. In one
of Rossi's earlier experiments the temperature within
his ECAT was measured to reach a high of about 135 C
just as the calculated power being measured at the
output of his heat exchanger reached the maximum. At
the time I concluded that this must have occurred as a
result of the filling of his device by liquid water.
I chose 130 C for my latest calculations mainly as an
estimate of the temperature within the ECAT modules.
The higher pressure (39.2 psi absolute) was the value
required to keep the liquid water in saturation with
the vapor. Rossi is using a feedback system to
control the heating of his modules and that requires
him to operate each at a few degrees above the output
temperature(102 C?) as a minimum. There is no
guarantee that he regulates them at 130 C as I
assumed, but that temperature was consistent with
having a ratio of vapor volume to liquid volume of
nearly 100 to 1.
Of course I could have raised the ECAT temperature to
get a larger ratio of flash vapor to liquid water at
the output stream. Likewise, the ratio would drop if a
lower temperature is assumed. The 130 C appeared to
be near to his earlier design, and I had to choose
something. Do you have a suggestion for a better
temperature or pressure to assume?
Dave
------------------------------------------------------------------------
