Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
No boiler is designed to create very wet steam as a possibility. Now, the 18-hour test doesn't involve steam. That was the point. But no boiler will be tested with water at a liter per second!
That is incorrect. A large boiler will be tested at 1 L per second or more. Rossi's upcoming 1 MW test will have to employ even higher flow rates. This rate was perhaps a little high for a 16 kW reactor, because it meant the temperature difference was only ~5°C. I think a difference of 10°C to 15°C would be better. However, 1 L/s turned out to be a wise choice. Levi reported in NyTeknik that power rose to ~130 kW for a while, with the outlet temperature reaching 40°C. At a lower flow rate this might have caused a serious accident.
And I doubt that a boiler would be tested with the thermometer place in the boiler itself, unless the design had been proven to produce even temperatures within the boiler.
The thermometers were not placed in the Rossi boiler itself. They were placed just outside it, which is where they are placed in a regular boiler test, in the boiler rooms I have seen. They usually use bimetallic dial thermometers. At these temperature differences and flow rates there is no way heat might have wicked directly to the temperature sensors.
Boiler test engineers are working with long-proven designs that have known operating characteristics.
That has no bearing on calorimetry. When the same stable temperatures and flow rates are observed with a mysterious black box, you can be certain that box is producing heat at the same rate as a conventional boiler. The laws of physics are uniform.
Steam systems typically recycle the water, it's recirculated, and there is no input water . . .
All industrial boilers produce hot water or process steam which is consumed by the industrial process. There would be no point to circulating the steam as such. Perhaps if it were used for space heating you might do that. It may be condensed and reused, but that would be no different from using any other feedwater source. Except that it tends to be filthy, in my experience.
. . . beyond a small amount to replace losses, typically from venting as needed. My own boiler does not automatically feed water, you have to press a button, to restore level as indicated on a water level glass.
This must refer to a space heating application.
You would *never* want overflow, i.e, water flowing in faster than is being boiled, except transiently to restore the level.
This has no bearing on the 18-hour flowing water test. That was a test of a water heat. Of course the water overflows with a hot water heater. It is used up, in the bath, washing machine or whatever the water is used for.
Of course you can measure heat with calorimetry, but there are several problems with the 18-hour test.
No, there are not. It was the same as any boiler test, and there are no problems with such tests. The problems discussed here are imaginary. The only problem is that it was not reported in quite enough detail. I asked them again to tell me the make and model of the flowmeter. If they provide this information I will update the LENR-CANR news section with this information.
I will grant, it would have been better for them to record time sequenced data with a computer or in a lab notebook, but a single value is acceptable.
In the end, it depends on the credibility of Rossi, because unless Rossi can be trusted not to manipulate the appearances, there is no test.
Of course it depends on them. Any experiment does. And it could be completely fake. This was a simple test, but they could easily dummy up a sophisticated fake test, complete with data and photos. Anyone can produce an impressive set of graphs with totally fake calorimetric data from a nonexistent test. I have done that using the random number generator in a spreadsheet. (I did it to show a researcher what kind of graph I thought would be helpful in an upcoming study.)
Rossi has shown great skill at creating appearances.
On the contrary, Rossi would make the world's worst con-man. He has shown incredible skill at taking what should be self-evident, unquestionably believable test data and making it seem suspicious. It is as if he goes out of his way to make himself seem like an inept crook. I do not think he does this deliberately, as Abd and others have speculated. Note that this speculation contradicts the message I am responding to here. Which is it? Is Rossi good at making convincing data? Or is he trying to throw people off his trail by making the whole thing look fake? I say: neither. He just happens to be bad at doing demonstrations.
- Jed
