From: Jed Rothwell
Three cheers for Andrea Rossi!!!
You have to give the man credit. He can be very annoying
some times, but at other times he comes through like no one else in this
field.Don't bring out the pom-poms just yet - at least not until the emissivity issue has been adequately addressed. No calorimetry was performed, only "thermometry" and Levy makes a "conservative" assumption for the emissivity. IMHO - he is on firm ground and it is/was conservative for epsilon to be 1 here - but it is still an assumption - and the reactor coating was not specified, but should be listed and possibly the reactor should be recoated with a certified blackbody coating - for a confirmation test. In 99% of the literature on the subject, you will see it firmly stated that for blackbody radiation, epsilon (emissivity) CANNOT be greater than one; but ... there is a fly in the ointment ... and there is a known niche field which is called "cavity emissivity" where epsilon can be greater than one. How much greater is unsure. These oddball emitters can be applied in a coating, and are "non isothermal" but do not violate CoE, of course, so there is likely to be a limit of how much spectrum can be shifted. I do not consider this a valid objection, but it needs to be aired in light of some old papers. http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1238876 If Rossi had an actual intent to deceive, and if he was aware of the type of IR meters being used in Bologna (likely), then apparently it is remotely possible to tailor the emissivity of the reactor coating in such a way that it appears to the IR meter to be giving off more heat than it really is (shifted spectrum emission). Let me be clear. This is highly UNLIKELY but it is still possible. It requires an actual intent to deceive, so it should be mentioned here, given the prior wet-steam fiasco. That episode may have constituted an actual intent to deceive (or extreme ignorance). At the risk of skeptics picking this point up later for a debunking of sorts - it is wise to address the issue of emissivity coatings up front now. What was the HotCat coated with - and/or could it be a cavity emitter ? But the main issue - why they did not perform water flow calorimetry? That is a major question that needs to be answered after all of these months. Instead of removing doubts, which they could have done with water flow - they merely added more doubts. Levi, of all people should know better after he was completely embarrassed two years ago in the wet steam fiasco. Why is Levi permitted to be the lead author here after the prior fail !?! Jones
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