Robert Leguillon wrote:
I think that you're misunderstanding me. If-And-Only-If the power at the secondary is LESS than the peak power input to the primary, there will be arguments about the "heat after death" or "self-sustaining" operation.
In most of these test runs the output power from the reactor has been far greater than input power. It varies from 6 times great to hundreds of times greater. In only a few instances has it been more or less equal to output. I assume in these instances the device was not working.
Obviously there will be some losses in the heat transfer to the secondary cooling water loop. That should be negligible compared to the difference between input and output.
If the most energy that you put into the E-Cat is 1 kW, and 2 kW is observed at the output, then the H.A.D. operation is totally unnecessary, but may impress some people. However, if you put 1 kW into the input for two hours, seeing a slow build-to-parity at the secondary (where the secondary only achieves 1 kW), then how long the heat takes to decay when power is removed will be a bone of contention.
It will not be a bone of contention to people who can do arithmetic. During the time the device is heating up, the balance of input and output is nearly even. Very little heat is stored in the system. It is easy to determine that the total heat release during heat after death far exceeds any endothermic storage during the buildup. As I mentioned yesterday, a calorimeter can measure an endothermic reaction as easily and as accurately as an exothermic reaction. In your hypothetical example with 2 kW going into the system for two hours, you will definitely see 1.98 kW emerge from the system during the entire two hours. Only a little will be left over. Your hypothetical situation would only be a problem if the temperature of the secondary loop did not rise during the entire two-hour event, indicating that all of the heat was magically stored. That's ridiculous.
There is not the slightest chance that a device of this nature is storing heat to any significant extent.
Furthermore, when the eCat works, it always turns on in about 10 minutes, not two hours. during most of those two hours it would be producing far more output heat than input power.
To be little more specific, someone just wrote to me that the inside of the eCat has a volume of 30 L and the water in it might be superheated. I wrote back:
"I do not think the water could be any hotter than 200°C. I doubt it is pressurized to be that hot. Anyway, assuming it is 200°C, that would be a 180°C rise in temperature. With 30 L of water that comes to 5,400,000 cal, which is 22.6 MJ, or 6.3 kWh. I believe the output is around 15 kW, so this much stored heat would be released from the device in ~25 min. The temperature would fall rapidly during that time and everyone would see that it is cooling down.
The device has reportedly been in heat after death mode for about five hours according to Daniel's latest tweet, so obviously this cannot be stored heat."
You need to stop fretting about stored heat. It cannot explain any of the significant cold fusion reactions that have been reported. It is orders of magnitude too small for that. It is a non-issue. We can always tell how much heat is stored and we always know that it cannot explain the reaction. Stored heat and recombination are the bugbears of pathological skeptics who do not understand elementary physics.
- Jed
