The upcoming test of Rossi's reactor is described here: http://pesn.com/2011/09/26/9501920_NobelPrize_Laureate_to_Test_Cold_Fusion_E-Cat/
This says there will be a primary steam loop, a heat exchanger, and a secondary flowing water loop. Rossi confirmed this in his blog. This also says the reactor will be run in heat after death mode for extended periods. The article has various other details. I discussed it with some of the people who will participate. They confirm these details. So if things go according to plan, this will be much better than previous tests. It may not be definitive but it will be an important step forward. I made some suggestions to the participants such as: They should record all parameters in a single computer, so that the time stamps correlate. They say they will do this. They should record watts, not just amperes, and they should record the flow rate, for goodness sake. I believe they will do this. They should have the paper edited by a native speaker of English before publishing. They will do this. They should confirm all parameters with hand-held instruments, for example, they should measure the flow with a flow meter and also a stopwatch, a bucket and a weight scale. I sure hope they do this. They should report the make and model of every instrument used in the test. I have strongly recommended they publish the complete dataset in a spreadsheet, similar to the spreadsheet Lewan uploaded recently. No response yet, but I hope they will do this. In my opinion the totality of the evidence from the previous tests has been convincing, especially the February 18-hour test with flowing water and the recent test with 30 minutes of heat after death. Convincing, yes, but I also agree with critics who say these tests have been sloppy, and poorly reported. When I say "poorly reported" I mean, for example, they should have listed the make and model of all instruments, as I told them. I felt silly saying this to professional scientists. This is teaching grandma how to suck eggs. In high school in college you learn that all technical papers should include the make and model. But they did not do this, so I thought I should tell them. To give another example, they should have reported the readings from the flow meter in the 18-hour test. It appears to be an analog, non-electronic meter. In that case, they should have reported the instantaneous readings every 10 minutes, and the final cumulative reading. Of course it is better to use an electronic meter and record the data along with input power and temperatures every minute. The instruments typically measure these values thousands of times a second, before recording an average value periodically, one to five times per minute. There is no need to record more frequently than this in a test that lasts an hour or longer. - Jed
