Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:11 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: No problem, I will meet you here in a couple of years and we can compare notes. Good, but I was hoping you'd be able to tell us now if you might get a little skeptical if the hot cat has a similar fate that the steam cat has seen in the last 2 years. If it has come to nothing in that time, will you be so confident? I assure you that I can speak to any of the objections that you have provided they are not totally out of reality. That's your argument? You assure me that you have one? Mostly you ignore my objections and speak to someone else's and repeat your own unsupported claims. Lets start with one of your choice regarding the many heat generation issues. How about how a small amount of heat can control a much larger amount? Are you interesting in an explanation or do you want to keep stating things that can be shown wrong? You haven't shown anything to be wrong. And if you have an explanation for controlling positive thermal feedback with heat, why don't you just give it already, instead of repeatedly saying you will give it. Or, how about my favorite recent issue about how DC flowing due to rectification in the load Someone else's argument. Address my points when you respond to my posts, or it's very inefficient.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:13 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I am attempting to keep you form getting banned since I want to use you to clear up a number of issues. It is hoped that you will go back to the other skeptics and then set them straight. Garbage. You don't need anyone else to present an argument. Just post your best. You're free to go over to other forums and direct them to your words of wisdom.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:25 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Maybe we are making headway in this discussion. Can I assume that you are now saying that the hot cat can actually produce heat by some unknown process? So far it is not clear that you accept this premise. For heaven's sake. You piddle along asking stupid questions to avoid actually addressing my objections. Let me spell this out for you. I am skeptical of the ecat, partly because *if* it worked as he claims with a thermal-to-thermal COP of 3 or 6, (1) it would be easy to make it self-sustain (possibly with thermostatically controlled cooling), and yet he doesn't, and (2) it would be difficult to control with the addition of heat. What I said was that it is possible to conceive of a situation in which one could control positive thermal feedback with adding heat, particularly if the external heat were concentrated and at a higher temperature -- think flames to sustain charcoal briquets when they are being lit. But the hot cat uses external heat that is more diffuse and at a lower temperature than the heat from the reaction, so it is very difficult to imagine -- think controlling glowing embers with a space heater held nearby. And even if it were possible, it's the last way any sane person would do it. If the thing produces heat, and there's a danger of runaway, the obvious way to control it is with thermostatically controlled cooling. The claim that he needs heat to control it is such an obvious excuse to allow him to add heat, I'm amazed true believers buy into it. So, no, I think it highly unlikely that the hot cat is actually producing heat by an unknown process. But that's totally irrelevant to the question of whether it's plausible to use heat to control it *if it were producing heat*. Do you understand the concept of a hypothetical? Then, are you agreeing that DC current flowing in the primary due to rectification … I didn't follow the dc discussion you're talking about, and I don't follow what you're saying about it here. But that's not the point. I don't believe we could enumerate every possible way to trick those meters, even if we had a decent report about how things were connected and where the measurements were made, which we don't. But the way to exclude tricks is to take the control of the experiment away from the suspected deceiver. Give open access to the hot cat under whatever necessary supervision. This test was the furthest thing from that, and it used unnecessarily complex input, a severely inadequate device to measure the input if there was suspicion of deception, and an indirect way to measure the heat output, when much more direct and visual methods are available. I have not personally been following the energy density so I must leave that discussion to those with more knowledge. No one really knows exactly how LENR works including me so that is unfair to ask of me. And you don't see a double standard here? You said that anyone unqualified to describe how a deception might work is not allowed to speculate that deception might be occurring based on sadly inadequate measurements and scrutiny, And yet you say you are not qualified to explain how such a high power density is possible without melting the nickel, or how nuclear reactions can happen in the first place, and yet that doesn't stop you from speculating -- nay practically guaranteeing -- that they are happening. You know, there would be a very easy way to at least show that the heat is coming from the central cylinder (if it were), just by putting a thermocouple on it and outside the resistor radius. But of course, they didn't do that either, did they?
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 8:08 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Josh, once you understand how the ECAT uses heat for control you will realize that the heat can not be applied continuously. Well, you're gonna have to explain it if you expect me to understand it. And then you're gonna have to explain how the December hot cat used continuously applied heat, and worked for over 100 hours. And how the steam cats were all at constant temperature. And how some of the steam cats allegedly self-sustained for 4 hours, or the hotcat self-sustained for more than 100 hours back in August or July 2012. Or you're gonna have to suspect Rossi was less than honest in some of those demos, and that would make him suspicious in this one. Please take time to study what I have been and am currently writing so that you will not keep making this statement when it is not accurate. I haven't been able to read everything. Did I miss where you explained something? Because all I've seen is a few vague and unjustified paragraphs that in themselves explain squat. Remember, continuous heat input to the ECAT results in thermal run away. Except when it doesn't, I guess, as in the examples listed above.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: ** Yes it was a poor analogy, but so what? Cude’s analysis is wrong no matter how much he obfuscates and by jumping on a poor analogy – he does not gain credibility. ** Which analogy is that? I was suggesting there was no analogy in which heat is used to control a positive thermal feedback. Yes - the ICE is not a good analogy to ECat but in contrast ICF is an adequate metaphor – which is why he avoids ICF of course. In ICF, the goal is to reach a situation where each pellet self-sustains -- i.e. ignites. That is expected when the heat produced by fusion that stays within a pellet is equal to the heat added to initiate fusion. That point has been reached in the ecat, but it has not been reached in ICF, so my objection does not apply there. Subcritical fission is also a good metaphor No, it's not, because in that case, they don't control large heat with smaller heat. They control fission reactions with neutrons. The neutrons produced by the reactions themselves are necessarily fewer, or of a less favorable energy than the external neutrons. So, there is no neutron profit, and therefore it is subcritical. But there could be an energy profit, although it's not clear it will be realized in practice. The ECat can indeed be self-sustaining in single or in multiple units, according to the inventor. Right, and the repeated claims without demonstration makes it suspicious. The electrical input provides *control* and prevents runaway by permitting a lower mass of active material. Well, that's his excuse, but my objection stands. If 360 W from outside the reactor is enough to initiate the reaction, it seems implausible that 1.6 kW produced inside the reactor would not sustain it. Rossi uses electricity to make heat as part of ongoing phase-change cycling process [wild speculation deleted] The temperature was stable in the Dec hot cat. Apparently phase-change cycling is too difficult a topic for Cude to understand. True. Your explanations sound like word salad to me. Now, some of Hawking's words read like that to me too. So you may be another Hawking. But in any case, I don't benefit from it. You're out of my league.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: But I think you misunderstood. I was not referring to new science theories there. I was saying that it's common sense that if Rossi's claims were being accepted by the majority, there would be huge excitement. Not necessarily. Sometimes people act in accordance with the rule Once bitten, twice shy. But I'm referring to the time where they have overcome shyness on the second round; that is, where the claims are accepted by the majority. Once that happens there will be huge excitement. So I am arguing precisely that they have *not* accepted it, probably because they are twice shy. Others were arguing I could not know that it was not widely accepted. I still think it's common sense.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 8:58 AM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: No, you don't. Plenty of ICEs (outboards, motorcycles) run without batteries. Car engines would run without batteries too, unless they use some kind of electronic fault detection that shuts it down without a battery. But the spark doesn't need a battery. And even with a battery, it's still self-sustaining. It's not a valid point. It's a simple point -- some engines (many engines; most engines?) require a secondary source of power to control the cycle. No, any ICE can run without a battery (except for artificial fault detection), and a battery is not a secondary source of power. The battery holds the same amount of energy when you shut the engine down as it did when you started it. So, even if you want to think of the battery helping to control something, all the energy in the battery, beyond a short time after it's installed or recharged after you left the lights on, is put there from the engine. The engine supplies the power that controls it. That's self-sustaining buy any definition. Anyway, if it serves some purpose for you, that's fine, but I was asking if there was a system that uses an *external* *heat* source to control a source of heat. That's not it. If an ecat were to use a battery which was charged by the ecat, that would be self-sustaining too.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:39 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:54 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. I passed over this point too quickly. One question is why in Rossi's device the heat generated by the reaction would not be sufficient to sustain the reaction, as in combustion, without some kind of external drive. This does seem like an odd requirement. Giving Rossi the benefit of the doubt, the fact that an external stimulus is required in the form of resistance heating (also heat, as has been pointed out), this seems to indicate that one of two phenomena, or both, would need to be occurring: - The general area of the reaction is somewhat localized, and the normal thermal gradient that would lead heat to dissipate from that location must be countered from outside of it by the resistance heaters, so that sufficient heat is retained in that area. Right. External heat would affect the temperature gradient. But remember it took only a fraction of the external 360 W to cause the reaction power to initiate and increase to 1.6 kW, so it seems implausible that the 1.6 kW would not be enough to sustain it. - The reaction depends upon a flux of heat, and not simply elevated an temperature on its own. Heat is random motion, so it's hard to see how at the site of the potential reaction the direction of the flux would make a difference, and rate of the flux would be far higher at 1.6 kW than at 360 W.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: There is a third possibility as well. The reaction is localized, and it depends upon an elevated temperature to kick off. But the local region is destroyed by the reaction, so you have apply heat once more to initiate the reaction in other parts of the charge. But again 1.6 kW from within can do this more efficiently than 360 W from outside.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 3:22 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Eric, The resistive heating requirement is to be able to reverse the temperature excursion at the proper time by removing the extra input. Constant heat input will result in the destruction of the device when useful output power is generated. Except when it doesn't like in the December hot cat, and all the steam cats.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 4:10 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Eric, Model 1 appears to be more in line with what I suspect is happening except for the explanation of the lack of external heat for control issue. You need to consider that the peak heat power being generated inside the core is only about 2 times greater than the resistor heating required to control it at the turn around point. Rossi has stated this on several occasions and it matches my model. But it's not consistent with the December hot cat, in which case the overall COP was 6, and as I've argued, less than half of the input power will reach the core, the rest directly heating the outer ceramic. So, in that case, you probably have at least a peak power in the core at least 10 times larger that the external heat that is controlling it. When such a large percentage of the net power at that node is taken away abruptly, a turn around in temperature direction occurs. This is a complicated positive feedback system where a large fraction of the internally generated heat is being absorbed by the thermal mass of the device. Enough external heat is removed to force the core to be starved. That reverses the temperature path. Once reversed, the positive feedback works in a manner that accelerates the falling core temperature toward room. Could you provide the temperature dependence of the reaction rate and the heat loss that would produce such an effect. And also explain how the December hot cat was stable with constant input power. If you are very good, or lucky, you can reverse the core at just below an optimum point which will allow the temperature to languish there for an extended time before it begins it rapid decent. This is how you achieve a high value of COP. The core has a lot of time during which it puts out large values of heat energy before requiring a refresh drive pulse. The drive remains off for a longer time while the high temperature lingers. Does this help to explain the operation according to my model? Not to me. It's all just hand-waving. Could you quantify things a little? And explain why constant power was used in December.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:36 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: This is a good start Josh. I think I can explain that to you since you seem to be a pretty sharp guy. Thank you Mr Roberson for that kind compliment. Unfortunately it also takes an explanation that is realistic and a sharp guy to explain it. And you seem to be a guy who thinks he's a lot sharper than he is. I wish you'd look at my much simpler intuitive argument, and tell me what's wrong with it. For example, if 360 W from the outside can trigger the reaction, why would 1.6 kW from the inside not sustain it? I get that the basic claim is that the reaction power alone is not enough to maintain the reaction, so it decays toward zero, but the sum of the external and reaction powers is enough to make it grow, even to a temperature at which runaway occurs. But the problem is that it seems unlikely that a plausible temperature dependence of the reaction rate and of heat loss would produce that situation, given the constraints represented by the claimed observations. In particular, the much higher output power compared to the input power. While they claim a COP of 3 or 6 for the device, that would correspond to a much higher COP for the fuel itself, because much less than half of the input heat would reach the fuel. As I see it, you only need to postulate how the reaction rate depends on temperature, and how the heat loss depends on temperature to determine what will happen to the system. For a given input power and temperature, you can then calculate the net power (total power produced by the external plus reaction minus the heat loss). If that's positive, it will get hotter, if negative it will cool down. When it encounters a change in sign it will stabilize, A sign change (or zero net power) occurs when the heat loss is equal to external power plus the reaction power, much like the sun is stable with it's heat loss balancing its reaction rate. If the net power is positive, and it grows with temperature, then you get a runaway condition. In my brief tests I only used simple functions (of the temperature for the reaction rate, and of the temperature difference from ambient for the heat loss), and if the system is designed to be stable at 2 kW output for 360 W input, as in the December run, the removal of the input always left a system stable at a somewhat lower temperature. The reason is that the reaction rate has to grow quickly at the beginning to keep the total input power ahead of the heat loss so it is always positive until it reaches the 2 kW level in the December test. In my calculations, if it grows fast enough to ensure that it reaches 2 kW, where the sign changes by design, then removal of the external drive doesn't quench it. This is true even assuming all 360 W reach the fuel. Realistically, far less than half would, especially at the higher temperatures, and this makes removal of the external even less significant. Now, it is surely possible to contrive a reaction rate dependence and a heat loss dependence to make it quench without the external heat, but it's far from obvious that it would be realistic, and that one could engineer the necessary dependence, particularly in so many and varied configurations. So, that's why I asked what your proposed functional dependences are that would give the observed behavior. How does the reaction rate depend on temperature, and how does the heat loss depend on temperature? And are they realistic dependences? But the real question, which is what raised the issue to begin with, is *why bother* trying to engineer these dependences. You and Storms admit that Rossi has difficult engineering challenges to make such a system stable with a high COP. Why would he make it so difficult for himself? No sane person would do it this way. If the reaction rate depends on temperature, and there is danger of runaway, then the obvious way to control it is with thermostatically controlled cooling. And then you could easily make it self-sustaining, by adjusting the cooling to give any temperature necessary. Instead he adds heat with the pretense of controlling the heat, because of course, that may be all the heat he's actually got. It's like so many cold fusion claims. It's not that there is an obvious alternative explanation for the apparent excess heat. It's that there are far more direct, straightforward, transparent, and well-established ways to demonstrate it that are not used. It seems like the claims only occur when the experiment is unnecessarily indirect and complex. So, I think it's a waste of time analyzing results like this. Do the experiment with an isolated finite power source, with flow calorimetry that integrates heat in a visual way, and do it under public scrutiny without restrictions on observers, and then the world will change. As Aesop's fable The leap at Rhodes finshes: No need of witnesses. Suppose this city is Rhodes. Now show us how far you can jump. The
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
I find it interesting that one who avoids any quantitative work would expect others to supply him with that information. josh, it would be a major waste of my time to do as you ask since it would be amazing for you to even take a glance at the data. I do admit that Rossi has done an excellent job of protecting his IP and so I have not choice but to work with models. This should come as not surprise to anyone familiar with this issue. Recheck your calculation of the peak input requirement Josh. I will leave that as an exercise to improve your knowledge. Perhaps after that work you will have a better understanding of the problems facing Rossi. I prefer not to repeat myself as much as some. I have no recall of constant power being inputted during the December test. This would not be a stable condition under normal circumstances. One day you will understand how this puppy operates and I would like to be there when that happens! Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Tue, Jun 4, 2013 11:38 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 4:10 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Eric, Model 1 appears to be more in line with what I suspect is happening except for the explanation of the lack of external heat for control issue. You need to consider that the peak heat power being generated inside the core is only about 2 times greater than the resistor heating required to control it at the turn around point. Rossi has stated this on several occasions and it matches my model. But it's not consistent with the December hot cat, in which case the overall COP was 6, and as I've argued, less than half of the input power will reach the core, the rest directly heating the outer ceramic. So, in that case, you probably have at least a peak power in the core at least 10 times larger that the external heat that is controlling it. When such a large percentage of the net power at that node is taken away abruptly, a turn around in temperature direction occurs. This is a complicated positive feedback system where a large fraction of the internally generated heat is being absorbed by the thermal mass of the device. Enough external heat is removed to force the core to be starved. That reverses the temperature path. Once reversed, the positive feedback works in a manner that accelerates the falling core temperature toward room. Could you provide the temperature dependence of the reaction rate and the heat loss that would produce such an effect. And also explain how the December hot cat was stable with constant input power. If you are very good, or lucky, you can reverse the core at just below an optimum point which will allow the temperature to languish there for an extended time before it begins it rapid decent. This is how you achieve a high value of COP. The core has a lot of time during which it puts out large values of heat energy before requiring a refresh drive pulse. The drive remains off for a longer time while the high temperature lingers. Does this help to explain the operation according to my model? Not to me. It's all just hand-waving. Could you quantify things a little? And explain why constant power was used in December.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Josh, I promised not to keep responding to you in an effort to keep your posts from flooding the bandwidth with non sense. You just need to make one consideration about input power. If you are sharp enough and can follow what I have written then you will put 2 and 2 together to understand the thermal control technique. The input power is not 360 watts peak as you have mistakenly repeated many times. It is instead two times that since the input duty cycle is generally 50%. Now the ratio that you rail about becomes 1600/720 or only 2.22 times. Actually it is a bit more since the 1600 is average. So, now you might realize that you are generating only about 2 times the heat required for control. Does this scare you too much? As a hint, consider that a large fraction of the internally generated heat is being absorbed by heating the thermal mass of the ECAT. So Mr. Cude, do I have to spell it out for you again? Anyhow, the immediate withdrawal of the drive heat leads to a situation where the internally generated heat can not continue to supply that lost to the outside plus that required to continue raising the temperature of the mass of the ECAT. This lack of enough internally generated heat causes the temperature to reverse direction and the positive feedback takes over and forces the temperature to head downward. At the right time, Rossi adds heat again to the system and reverses the process such that the temperature begins its rise upward, powered to a great extent by the positive feedback. I do not know how to make this any easier for you. Please tell me that you now understand and save me from having to repeat myself. I do not claim to be as smart as you, but at least I have accomplished an understanding of many issues that pass right over your head. Do something useful for a change Josh. Go back and explain to the others at molehole how the ECAT works. I have given you the best instructions that I know how to arrange. Now I will try to stand by and avoid the troll that seems to be everywhere. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Tue, Jun 4, 2013 3:53 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:36 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: This is a good start Josh. I think I can explain that to you since you seem to be a pretty sharp guy. Thank you Mr Roberson for that kind compliment. Unfortunately it also takes an explanation that is realistic and a sharp guy to explain it. And you seem to be a guy who thinks he's a lot sharper than he is. I wish you'd look at my much simpler intuitive argument, and tell me what's wrong with it. For example, if 360 W from the outside can trigger the reaction, why would 1.6 kW from the inside not sustain it? I get that the basic claim is that the reaction power alone is not enough to maintain the reaction, so it decays toward zero, but the sum of the external and reaction powers is enough to make it grow, even to a temperature at which runaway occurs. But the problem is that it seems unlikely that a plausible temperature dependence of the reaction rate and of heat loss would produce that situation, given the constraints represented by the claimed observations. In particular, the much higher output power compared to the input power. While they claim a COP of 3 or 6 for the device, that would correspond to a much higher COP for the fuel itself, because much less than half of the input heat would reach the fuel. As I see it, you only need to postulate how the reaction rate depends on temperature, and how the heat loss depends on temperature to determine what will happen to the system. For a given input power and temperature, you can then calculate the net power (total power produced by the external plus reaction minus the heat loss). If that's positive, it will get hotter, if negative it will cool down. When it encounters a change in sign it will stabilize, A sign change (or zero net power) occurs when the heat loss is equal to external power plus the reaction power, much like the sun is stable with it's heat loss balancing its reaction rate. If the net power is positive, and it grows with temperature, then you get a runaway condition. In my brief tests I only used simple functions (of the temperature for the reaction rate, and of the temperature difference from ambient for the heat loss), and if the system is designed to be stable at 2 kW output for 360 W input, as in the December run, the removal of the input always left a system stable at a somewhat lower temperature. The reason is that the reaction rate has to grow quickly at the beginning to keep the total input power ahead of the heat loss so it is always positive until it reaches the 2 kW level in the December test. In my calculations, if it grows fast enough to ensure that it reaches 2 kW
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: But I think you misunderstood. I was not referring to new science theories there. I was saying that it's common sense that if Rossi's claims were being accepted by the majority, there would be huge excitement. Not necessarily. Sometimes people act in accordance with the rule Once bitten, twice shy. But I'm referring to the time where they have overcome shyness on the second round; that is, where the claims are accepted by the majority. Once that happens there will be huge excitement. So I am arguing precisely that they have *not* accepted it, probably because they are twice shy. Others were arguing I could not know that it was not widely accepted. I still think it's common sense. I meant they are shy to express their acceptance. Harry
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:54 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. I passed over this point too quickly. One question is why in Rossi's device the heat generated by the reaction would not be sufficient to sustain the reaction, as in combustion, without some kind of external drive. This does seem like an odd requirement. Giving Rossi the benefit of the doubt, the fact that an external stimulus is required in the form of resistance heating (also heat, as has been pointed out), this seems to indicate that one of two phenomena, or both, would need to be occurring: - The general area of the reaction is somewhat localized, and the normal thermal gradient that would lead heat to dissipate from that location must be countered from outside of it by the resistance heaters, so that sufficient heat is retained in that area. - The reaction depends upon a flux of heat, and not simply elevated an temperature on its own. My knowledge of thermodynamics is limited, so I might be missing something important. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
I wrote: - The general area of the reaction is somewhat localized, and the normal thermal gradient that would lead heat to dissipate from that location must be countered from outside of it by the resistance heaters, so that sufficient heat is retained in that area. There is a third possibility as well. The reaction is localized, and it depends upon an elevated temperature to kick off. But the local region is destroyed by the reaction, so you have apply heat once more to initiate the reaction in other parts of the charge. You don't want to do this too fast, however, since if you do the process will become self-sustaining for a brief period and result in runaway and the destruction of the charge. So you have to turn up the heat, then turn it down and then turn it up again, etc., using little temperature excursions. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Eric, The resistive heating requirement is to be able to reverse the temperature excursion at the proper time by removing the extra input. Constant heat input will result in the destruction of the device when useful output power is generated. Dave -Original Message- From: Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 2:39 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:54 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. I passed over this point too quickly. One question is why in Rossi's device the heat generated by the reaction would not be sufficient to sustain the reaction, as in combustion, without some kind of external drive. This does seem like an odd requirement. Giving Rossi the benefit of the doubt, the fact that an external stimulus is required in the form of resistance heating (also heat, as has been pointed out), this seems to indicate that one of two phenomena, or both, would need to be occurring: The general area of the reaction is somewhat localized, and the normal thermal gradient that would lead heat to dissipate from that location must be countered from outside of it by the resistance heaters, so that sufficient heat is retained in that area. The reaction depends upon a flux of heat, and not simply elevated an temperature on its own. My knowledge of thermodynamics is limited, so I might be missing something important. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:22 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: The resistive heating requirement is to be able to reverse the temperature excursion at the proper time by removing the extra input. Constant heat input will result in the destruction of the device when useful output power is generated. Dave, I don't disagree with this assessment. But there's a subtlety that the original question is getting at. I don't know how to express the idea with much accuracy, but consider two different models: 1. There is near-uniform heating in the charge. Temperature above a certain point kicks off the reaction. Once going, the reaction itself feeds energy back the into bulk of the charge, where it has been generated, and the reaction becomes self-sustaining. 2. There is non-uniform heating in the charge. Heat flows from hot spots to surrounding areas. The heat that dissipates from hot spots can either be (a) sufficient to kick off the reaction elsewhere or (b) insufficient, in which case it is just dissipated. There is a threshold temperature below which you get (b) and above which you get (a). It seems like a mixture of gasoline or a load of coal that has been ignited is generates heat somewhat uniformly and follows model (1). It seems that model (1), if applied to the E-Cat, would make the resistance heaters superfluous, however. So I take it that we are forced into model (2). To someone approaching things without further context, it's not clear why model (1) would not apply, and that would raise questions about the resistance heaters. Further, I think we have to assume that the heating transients in model (2) are quite high, since there is the possibility of runaway. These are the subtleties I'm getting at. It seems that the requirement for resistance heaters places constraints that can be used to infer useful information about what is going on. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Eric, Model 1 appears to be more in line with what I suspect is happening except for the explanation of the lack of external heat for control issue. You need to consider that the peak heat power being generated inside the core is only about 2 times greater than the resistor heating required to control it at the turn around point. Rossi has stated this on several occasions and it matches my model. When such a large percentage of the net power at that node is taken away abruptly, a turn around in temperature direction occurs. This is a complicated positive feedback system where a large fraction of the internally generated heat is being absorbed by the thermal mass of the device. Enough external heat is removed to force the core to be starved. That reverses the temperature path. Once reversed, the positive feedback works in a manner that accelerates the falling core temperature toward room. If you are very good, or lucky, you can reverse the core at just below an optimum point which will allow the temperature to languish there for an extended time before it begins it rapid decent. This is how you achieve a high value of COP. The core has a lot of time during which it puts out large values of heat energy before requiring a refresh drive pulse. The drive remains off for a longer time while the high temperature lingers. Does this help to explain the operation according to my model? Dave -Original Message- From: Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 4:39 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:22 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: The resistive heating requirement is to be able to reverse the temperature excursion at the proper time by removing the extra input. Constant heat input will result in the destruction of the device when useful output power is generated. Dave, I don't disagree with this assessment. But there's a subtlety that the original question is getting at. I don't know how to express the idea with much accuracy, but consider two different models: There is near-uniform heating in the charge. Temperature above a certain point kicks off the reaction. Once going, the reaction itself feeds energy back the into bulk of the charge, where it has been generated, and the reaction becomes self-sustaining. There is non-uniform heating in the charge. Heat flows from hot spots to surrounding areas. The heat that dissipates from hot spots can either be (a) sufficient to kick off the reaction elsewhere or (b) insufficient, in which case it is just dissipated. There is a threshold temperature below which you get (b) and above which you get (a). It seems like a mixture of gasoline or a load of coal that has been ignited is generates heat somewhat uniformly and follows model (1). It seems that model (1), if applied to the E-Cat, would make the resistance heaters superfluous, however. So I take it that we are forced into model (2). To someone approaching things without further context, it's not clear why model (1) would not apply, and that would raise questions about the resistance heaters. Further, I think we have to assume that the heating transients in model (2) are quite high, since there is the possibility of runaway. These are the subtleties I'm getting at. It seems that the requirement for resistance heaters places constraints that can be used to infer useful information about what is going on. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Dave, I agree. You have described the process very well. The only thing missing from your model is the thermal contact between the source, (Ni) and the sink (the mass of the E-cat). The better the thermal contact, the longer the temperature can remain high while control is maintained and the less external power is required to keep control. In fact, a better design would be to have the heaters inside the container while the Ni was against the outside wall of the apparatus. This way, energy from the Ni could flow directly out and be radiated into space, which would allow for a fast cooling rate of the Ni once the internal power was turned off. Ed Storms On Jun 2, 2013, at 3:10 PM, David Roberson wrote: Eric, Model 1 appears to be more in line with what I suspect is happening except for the explanation of the lack of external heat for control issue. You need to consider that the peak heat power being generated inside the core is only about 2 times greater than the resistor heating required to control it at the turn around point. Rossi has stated this on several occasions and it matches my model. When such a large percentage of the net power at that node is taken away abruptly, a turn around in temperature direction occurs. This is a complicated positive feedback system where a large fraction of the internally generated heat is being absorbed by the thermal mass of the device. Enough external heat is removed to force the core to be starved. That reverses the temperature path. Once reversed, the positive feedback works in a manner that accelerates the falling core temperature toward room. If you are very good, or lucky, you can reverse the core at just below an optimum point which will allow the temperature to languish there for an extended time before it begins it rapid decent. This is how you achieve a high value of COP. The core has a lot of time during which it puts out large values of heat energy before requiring a refresh drive pulse. The drive remains off for a longer time while the high temperature lingers. Does this help to explain the operation according to my model? Dave -Original Message- From: Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 4:39 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:22 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: The resistive heating requirement is to be able to reverse the temperature excursion at the proper time by removing the extra input. Constant heat input will result in the destruction of the device when useful output power is generated. Dave, I don't disagree with this assessment. But there's a subtlety that the original question is getting at. I don't know how to express the idea with much accuracy, but consider two different models: There is near-uniform heating in the charge. Temperature above a certain point kicks off the reaction. Once going, the reaction itself feeds energy back the into bulk of the charge, where it has been generated, and the reaction becomes self-sustaining. There is non-uniform heating in the charge. Heat flows from hot spots to surrounding areas. The heat that dissipates from hot spots can either be (a) sufficient to kick off the reaction elsewhere or (b) insufficient, in which case it is just dissipated. There is a threshold temperature below which you get (b) and above which you get (a). It seems like a mixture of gasoline or a load of coal that has been ignited is generates heat somewhat uniformly and follows model (1). It seems that model (1), if applied to the E-Cat, would make the resistance heaters superfluous, however. So I take it that we are forced into model (2). To someone approaching things without further context, it's not clear why model (1) would not apply, and that would raise questions about the resistance heaters. Further, I think we have to assume that the heating transients in model (2) are quite high, since there is the possibility of runaway. These are the subtleties I'm getting at. It seems that the requirement for resistance heaters places constraints that can be used to infer useful information about what is going on. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:10 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Does this help to explain the operation according to my model? Yes. But I think your SPICE model is working at a higher level than what I was describing. Your model is looking at the thermodynamics of the system as a whole, and when you take away a third of the heat by cutting power to the resistance heaters, the core is starved and so on. This is a macroscopic view of the core, where the temperature would appear uniform to a set of thermocouples. I'm looking at the microscopic level, where if you could zoom in you'd see a different level of activity. I think your SPICE model is more consistent with my model (2) than my model (1). I have in mind specifically the SPAWAR video [1]. One detail I should elaborate on for model (2) is that there would not necessarily be a threshold temperature, per se, above which you'd get runaway and below which you'd get dissipation. Instead there would appear to be a bounded temperature range, at the lower bound of which you're less likely to get local temperature excursions and at the upper bound of which you'd be more likely to get them. At the upper bound of the range, you'd cross over into runaway. Eric [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUVmOQXBS68
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Thanks Ed, I have concentrated upon the overall picture with my model instead of the microscopic improvements that are no doubt available. You are certainly correct that the thermal contacts could be improved which will interact in different ways with the system. A balance has to be achieved where the thermal run away temperatures, which greatly depend upon what you say, are practical for best ECAT operation. Rossi needs to have solid positive feedback to get high COP, and he needs this to occur at a convenient temperature which performs well with the core materials. The issue of hot spots is certain to come up during his design meetings and much of that depends upon how the material is bound to the heat sinking and how uniform it is deposited, etc. I suspect the solutions to this type of problem are keeping him busy. There are a number of challenging engineering questions that will arise as he handles the temperature effects associated with the heat exchange process. That team is going to have a busy schedule. Dave -Original Message- From: Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Cc: Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.com Sent: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 5:20 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question Dave, I agree. You have described the process very well. The only thing missing from your model is the thermal contact between the source, (Ni) and the sink (the mass of the E-cat). The better the thermal contact, the longer the temperature can remain high while control is maintained and the less external power is required to keep control. In fact, a better design would be to have the heaters inside the container while the Ni was against the outside wall of the apparatus. This way, energy from the Ni could flow directly out and be radiated into space, which would allow for a fast cooling rate of the Ni once the internal power was turned off. Ed Storms On Jun 2, 2013, at 3:10 PM, David Roberson wrote: Eric, Model 1 appears to be more in line with what I suspect is happening except for the explanation of the lack of external heat for control issue. You need to consider that the peak heat power being generated inside the core is only about 2 times greater than the resistor heating required to control it at the turn around point. Rossi has stated this on several occasions and it matches my model. When such a large percentage of the net power at that node is taken away abruptly, a turn around in temperature direction occurs. This is a complicated positive feedback system where a large fraction of the internally generated heat is being absorbed by the thermal mass of the device. Enough external heat is removed to force the core to be starved. That reverses the temperature path. Once reversed, the positive feedback works in a manner that accelerates the falling core temperature toward room. If you are very good, or lucky, you can reverse the core at just below an optimum point which will allow the temperature to languish there for an extended time before it begins it rapid decent. This is how you achieve a high value of COP. The core has a lot of time during which it puts out large values of heat energy before requiring a refresh drive pulse. The drive remains off for a longer time while the high temperature lingers. Does this help to explain the operation according to my model? Dave -Original Message- From: Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 4:39 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:22 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: The resistive heating requirement is to be able to reverse the temperature excursion at the proper time by removing the extra input. Constant heat input will result in the destruction of the device when useful output power is generated. Dave, I don't disagree with this assessment. But there's a subtlety that the original question is getting at. I don't know how to express the idea with much accuracy, but consider two different models: There is near-uniform heating in the charge. Temperature above a certain point kicks off the reaction. Once going, the reaction itself feeds energy back the into bulk of the charge, where it has been generated, and the reaction becomes self-sustaining. There is non-uniform heating in the charge. Heat flows from hot spots to surrounding areas. The heat that dissipates from hot spots can either be (a) sufficient to kick off the reaction elsewhere or (b) insufficient, in which case it is just dissipated. There is a threshold temperature below which you get (b) and above which you get (a). It seems like a mixture of gasoline or a load of coal that has been ignited is generates heat somewhat uniformly and follows
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
OK, if you are looking at that level of detail, you face many possibilities. We are greatly hampered in our ability to analyze these types of problems due to lack of knowledge about Rossi's material and its engineering behavior. We all suspect that they will find variation throughout the device due to manufacturing type issues. I have also been wondering how he handles the local hot spots that must surface and apparently we are not the only ones with this concern. One thing in his favor is the thermal conductivity of the metal enclosing the core material. This metal will make a strong effort to smooth out the temperatures. And, it appears that Rossi has done a fair job with the heating resistors since they are symmetric. We are not privy to how the active material is bound to the black metal cylinder, but I suspect that this is part of an important method for smoothing the internal temperatures. I am afraid there is not much more that we can do beyond constructing a model without much more extensive data from Rossi. Dave -Original Message- From: Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 5:22 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:10 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Does this help to explain the operation according to my model? Yes. But I think your SPICE model is working at a higher level than what I was describing. Your model is looking at the thermodynamics of the system as a whole, and when you take away a third of the heat by cutting power to the resistance heaters, the core is starved and so on. This is a macroscopic view of the core, where the temperature would appear uniform to a set of thermocouples. I'm looking at the microscopic level, where if you could zoom in you'd see a different level of activity. I think your SPICE model is more consistent with my model (2) than my model (1). I have in mind specifically the SPAWAR video [1]. One detail I should elaborate on for model (2) is that there would not necessarily be a threshold temperature, per se, above which you'd get runaway and below which you'd get dissipation. Instead there would appear to be a bounded temperature range, at the lower bound of which you're less likely to get local temperature excursions and at the upper bound of which you'd be more likely to get them. At the upper bound of the range, you'd cross over into runaway. Eric [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUVmOQXBS68
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:59 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I am afraid there is not much more that we can do beyond constructing a model without much more extensive data from Rossi. Perhaps. But I think we can say that given what we know about the need for the control system and what we've seen in the temperature measurements, the thermodynamic properties of the E-Cat core at the macroscopic level are different from those of a load of ignited coal, unless I'm mistaken -- instead they're those of the SPICE model you're making. As far as I can tell, the behaviors of the two systems are very different. Assuming this is true, the challenge is to tease out what the microscopic differences might be that differ between an ignited load of coal and the charge in the E-Cat. I think you are right that we can only get so far, since we're missing important details. But I think it might be possible to place some constraints on the microscopic system. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: Giving Rossi the benefit of the doubt, the fact that an external stimulus is required in the form of resistance heating (also heat, as has been pointed out), this seems to indicate that one of two phenomena, or both, would need to be occurring: - The general area of the reaction is somewhat localized, and the normal thermal gradient that would lead heat to dissipate from that location must be countered from outside of it by the resistance heaters, so that sufficient heat is retained in that area. - The reaction depends upon a flux of heat, and not simply elevated an temperature on its own. My knowledge of thermodynamics is limited, so I might be missing something important. Good ideas Harry
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 6:55 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 12:36 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: He said you need a battery for an internal combustion engine, and so that means it's not self-sustaining. That was what I responded to. My point was a valid one. It's that for a regular ICE you need a secondary source of power to drive the spark plugs No, you don't. Plenty of ICEs (outboards, motorcycles) run without batteries. Car engines would run without batteries too, unless they use some kind of electronic fault detection that shuts it down without a battery. But the spark doesn't need a battery. And even with a battery, it's still self-sustaining. It's not a valid point.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: the analogy only goes so far, in that it is harder in Rossi's case to recapture the heat and channel it back into the secondary source. But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. An ICE is self-sustaining. The ecat needs external power. They're different. Your example is wrong, no matter how much you wriggle.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Josh, once you understand how the ECAT uses heat for control you will realize that the heat can not be applied continuously. Please take time to study what I have been and am currently writing so that you will not keep making this statement when it is not accurate. Remember, continuous heat input to the ECAT results in thermal run away. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sat, Jun 1, 2013 6:54 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: the analogy only goes so far, in that it is harder in Rossi's case to recapture the heat and channel it back into the secondary source. But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. An ICE is self-sustaining. The ecat needs external power. They're different. Your example is wrong, no matter how much you wriggle.
RE: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
From: Joshua Cude Eric Walker wrote: the analogy only goes so far, in that it is harder in Rossi's case to recapture the heat and channel it back into the secondary source. But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. An ICE is self-sustaining. The ecat needs external power. They're different. Your example is wrong, no matter how much you wriggle. Yes it was a poor analogy, but so what? Cude's analysis is wrong no matter how much he obfuscates and by jumping on a poor analogy - he does not gain credibility. He would rather talk and invent imaginary problems, than listen and learn. Yes - the ICE is not a good analogy to ECat but in contrast ICF is an adequate metaphor - which is why he avoids ICF of course. Subcritical fission is also a good metaphor but Cude is not interested in actually finding truth, and he has no interest in addressing adequate metaphors. The ECat can indeed be self-sustaining in single or in multiple units, according to the inventor. The electrical input provides control and prevents runaway by permitting a lower mass of active material. Rossi uses electricity to make heat as part of ongoing phase-change cycling process known as recalescence; but the gain comes during cooling, not during heating. The applied heat only insures that the next cycle is primed, but that level of make-up heat can be applied from another ECat unit if necessary, or from natural gas, which he has demonstrated - but control is easier to handle and switch via electrical current. Apparently phase-change cycling is too difficult a topic for Cude to understand. I will try to explain it once again. Recalescence happens on cooling. It is a sudden rise in temperature at the expense of internal reordering of the active metal (nickel-hydrogen based). The internal reordering causes absorbed hydrogen to give up LENR energy in some way - which is the presently unknown quasi-nuclear feature of LENR. The phase-change energy (Gibbs free energy) itself - having caused some temporal gain - must then be fully compensated by heat from somewhere, if the reaction is to continue. It can be compensated internally without added electricity, if one is willing to give up control by having a large amount of reactant which pushes safety limits, but it is advisable to control the reaction by having less reactant and using applied electrical heat. In any given cycle, when operating with a low mass of reactant - the excess energy from hydrogen LENR gain alone may be insufficient in any single time-frame, even if over hours there is an average net excess of impressive proportions. Rossi may claim 6-1 but the evidence favors a lower ratio. At any rate, and for control purposes, additional externally available heat simply guarantees that the next cycle proceeds in a regular fashion. Technically electrical input is not needed after startup. Electrical input is used to control the process by applying bursts of heat faster and more regularly than the internal gain will permit but without the risk of runaway. This is not a particularly difficult concept to grasp for anyone with an open mind - who seeks to learn, instead of being afflicted with pathological negativity, combined with a misguided agenda to impede progress. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:51 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: No, you don't. Plenty of ICEs (outboards, motorcycles) run without batteries. Car engines would run without batteries too, unless they use some kind of electronic fault detection that shuts it down without a battery. But the spark doesn't need a battery. And even with a battery, it's still self-sustaining. It's not a valid point. It's a simple point -- some engines (many engines; most engines?) require a secondary source of power to control the cycle. That source of power in this case is different from the one being used for work. You discredit your objectivity by failing to acknowledge this point. It does not matter to me that you do this. I don't think it matters to you that you do this. It's all stimulus and response at this point. The name of the game is to get the last word in. It demonstrates to any onlookers that the purpose here is not to try to understand what might be going on with the E-Cat, it's to engage in endless argument. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 6:57 AM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. ** ** An ICE is self-sustaining. The ecat needs external power. They're different. Your example is wrong, no matter how much you wriggle. ** ** Yes it was a poor analogy, but so what? Cude’s analysis is wrong no matter how much he obfuscates and by jumping on a poor analogy – he does not gain credibility. Forgive me, but I rather like the analogy. That Joshua is studiously avoiding seeing how it applies does not make it a bad analogy. Note that its limitation -- that in a normal ICE the motion of the shaft can easily be used to recapture the energy, which is different from the case of the E-Cat, is a good and relevant limitation in this context. It improves the relevance of the analogy. It shows that, given the possibility that the E-Cat may require a secondary source of power (let's call it requirement 1), you have to do some fancy footwork in this particular case (Stirling engine, etc.) in order to recapture the energy that was not required in the case of the ICE (let's call this requirement 2). It's not clear that requirement 1 applies in the case of the E-Cat; perhaps it doesn't. This is what Joshua is pointing out. I'm saying that the possibility exists, however (as in the case of the ICE), and that if we assume for the sake of argument that it does, then requirement 2 also applies in this instance. I'm going further and saying that requirement 1 is quite common. These things are all I need to make my point that Rossi's need for an external control system is not outlandish; on the contrary, it's quite reasonable. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: I'm not talking about initiating. I'm talking about sustaining. I have no problem using electricity to initiate the ecat. But if it's a source of energy, it should behave like one and be able to at least power itself. A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. In addition to the wood fuel, oxygen must be supplied. A battery is used to start a car engine, but not to sustain it. In addition to the gasoline fuel, oxygen must be supplied. If the ecat must be self-sustaining to be considered a credible source of power, then a campfire or a car engine should not be accepted as credible sources of power because they don't make their own oxygen. I would consider the firewood + oxygen or the car engine + oxygen as the devices that are self-sustaining. One can certainly enclose oxygen with an engine or with chemical fuel to make a self-contained thing that self-sustains, if you have trouble with the abstract notion of a device that includes gases present in the atmosphere as part of its definition. Oxygen is not an energy source, so it does not represent energy input. Including the ac mains as part of the ecat is different though because that is an energy source by itself, and the goal of the ecat is to replace the power source that provides the mains.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. Cold fusion is not fire. It does not work the same way. Well, no. Nuclear reactions are different. I was just disputing the idea that the concept of keeping cold fusion going with external heat is a simple extrapolation from other sources of heat that require external heat to keep them going. It's not. Evidently, Rossi's reactor requires external stimulation to keep the reaction under control. Not evidently. Allegedly. That's what he claims to give an excuse for attaching a source of power. But the problem is, if it's heat, how does it know that it's external? Heat just produces a temperature in the fuel. If the heat from the fuel can maintain that temperature, how can adding heat stabilize it? As I said, this is conceivable if the external heat is more concentrated (at a higher temperature), but in the hot cat, it must be more diffuse, and at a lower temperature. That's how it works. You cannot dictate to Mother Nature how things must work. If you unplug a Rossi cell and try to make it self-sustain without input, it will melt. But just turning off the input power stops the reaction? How can it do both?
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:23 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: There seems to be a serious hangup over why a heat generating device needs some form of heating input to sustain itself. The skeptics can not seem to get their arms around this issue so I will make another short attempt to explain why this is important. To achieve a high value of COP the ECAT operates within a region that is unstable. This translates into a situation where the device if given the chance will attempt to increase its internal energy until it melts or ceases to operate due to other damage. Control of the device is obtained by adding external heat via the power resistors allowing the core to heat up toward a critical point of no return. Just prior to that critical temperature the extra heating is rapidly halted. The effect of this heating collapse is to force the device core heating to change direction and begin cooling off. I do get the basic idea. The problem is I don't see how to make it work in the latest experiments. The switching would have to be on a pretty slow time scale, because of thermal mass. It would take on the order of minutes for an appreciable change in the internal temperature to result from shutting down the resistors, as is consistent with the rather slow change in temperature in the March experiment. But in the December experiment, there is no switching on this time scale. The power is measured on the lines to the ecat, and they claim the power is constant as recorded by the PCE830 on a 1 second time scale. Also they say that the power output is almost constant on the same time scale. So, I fail to see how that kind of a scheme could work there. The input in that experiment is 360 W applied to the resistors, and that is allegedly enough to trigger the reaction. The total output power is about 2 kW, so that would be 1.6 kW generated by the reactor *inside* the cylinder. If 360 W from outside is enough to trigger the reaction, how can 1.6 kW not be enough to keep it going? I picture someone holding a butane lighter to glowing coals, and expecting them to extinguish when he takes the lighter away. Now, you might discount the December run, but then you'd impugn Levi's integrity, and since he was clearly in charge in March, that makes the whole thing kind of dodgy. But even in the March run, things don't add up. They claim it takes about 800 W to the reactor from the resistors to trigger the reaction. From the geometry, only a fraction of that power will actually be absorbed by the reactor itself. (The rest will be absorbed by the ceramic and the end caps.) The average output from the reactor is also about 800 W, but this is generated inside the reactor, so again, it makes no sense that the reaction would extinguish when you turn the external power off. Furthermore, in all cases, it seems implausible that the output would be that stable without any feedback from the reactor output. Even if the sort of control you talk about were possible, it would require the exact duty cycle to keep the temperature from drifting up or down. And even if Rossi found the right duty cycle, it seems unlikely it would stay the same for 4 days at those temperatures. People are always excusing the absence of progress by suggesting the reaction is so hard to control, but from both these experiments, it appears to be rock stable. That would be the case if the heating were all resistive. The behavior looks nothing like you would expect a new reaction sensitive to temperature would look. Positive feedback can work in either direction; that is, the temperature can be either increasing or decreasing and the trick is to make it go in the desired direction. Are you saying positive can be negative. What's the trick to making it decrease when 1/5 the power makes it increase? The closer to the critical point that Rossi is able to switch directions, the longer the temperature waveform will linger near that point before heading downward. This is a delicate balance and most likely the reason Rossi has such a difficult fight on his hands to keep control. High COP, such as 6, is about all that can be safely maintained. Sorry, but it sounds like nonsensical speculation to me. The explanation above is based upon a spice model that I have developed and run many times. To model the behavior, you need to propose a reaction rate (power out from the reactor) as a function of temperature, and the temperature dependence of the reactor on the power produced by the reactor and the external input. What functional dependence do you use for these? I can't think of any that would work. Again, if 360 W from the outside gets it going, why can't 1.6 kW on the inside keep it going? In the old ecats, with a resistor inside the reactor, one could possibly conceive of a method if the resistor produced higher temperature concentrated a single point, and the reaction were diffuse throughout the
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: If we are going to do analogies, a more useful one would be to compare the Rossi reactor to an internal combustion engine ICE. With an ICE you have to apply the spark periodically to small portions of the fuel to trigger the reaction. Right, but the spark is produced from power generated by the engine itself. It's entirely self-sustaining. Cude is demanding we find a way to ignite the entire tank of fuel with the spark plug once, and then have the car run normally after that. This does not work. The car goes up in flames, similar to the way Rossi's reactor melts. What a terrible analogy. The ecat is not an engine, and I'm not proposing any such thing. I just don't believe that if the reaction producing 1.6 kW thermal is stabilized by an external input of 360 W thermal. I don't see why turning the external off would quench the signal as Dave claims, or why it would melt the ecat as you claim.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: As dave explains it makes sense if the energy input provides cooling power. Exactly. The whole thing is nuts. If it really needed to be regulated, it would make sense to regulate with temperature controlled cooling.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.comwrote: I agree Dave, I have been providing this explanation for several years without any effect. I'm glad you are adding your voice. The critical point at which the temperature must be reduced depends on the degree of thermal contact between the source of energy (the Ni powder) and the sink (The outside world). The better the thermal contact between these two, the higher the stable temperature and the greater the COP. Rossi has not achieved a COP even close to what is possible. You sound like you're just making shit up. It's wild speculation based on nothing whatsoever.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:52 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Josh, what is common sense now becomes ancient history when the newest theories come out. Yes, I know that happens sometimes. And sometimes things that are common sense remain common sense. But I think you misunderstood. I was not referring to new science theories there. I was saying that it's common sense that if Rossi's claims were being accepted by the majority, there would be huge excitement. How do you think men learned to fly heavier than air crafts when it was common sense that this was not possible. Like I said, you're arguing a different point, but what the hell. It wasn't common sense that flight was impossible. Everyone saw birds fly, and gliders were already common. And while there were some famous skeptics, and there was some erroneous skepticism of the Wrights specifically, most scientists regarded powered flight as inevitable. That's why the subject was treated seriously by all the major journals, including Science and Nature before the Wright's flight. That's a matter of record. There are better examples to support your argument, but I don't know of a case where a small scale phenomenon like cold fusion was rejected so categorically for a quarter century that was later vindicated. I'm aware of a couple that come close, but they occurred about 150 years ago. You need to realize that all knowledge does not reside within your understanding. I do realize that. But I wonder if you realize that you are not in possession of received wisdom. All of us should be open to learning new concepts and it is about time for you to give LENR a fair chance. It is about time for you to give the bogosity of LENR a fair chance. All your thinking starts from the assumption that it's real. You'll never make progress that way.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Bill Beaty has an excellent quote on this subject, here: http://amasci.com/weird/vmore.html Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. Even if that were true, and I don't believe it, I hope you're not arguing that on that basis, any fact that is damned must be true, or any invention considered impossible is possible, or that any claimed discovery that causes nervous shock must be real, or that every innovation denounced as fraud is true as the driven snow. Because that would be silly.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 4:47 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: If someone is looking for an analogy they could look at the behavior of a power transistor mounted on a heat sink. For this exercise assume that the collector is directly connected to a power source. Apply enough base drive to obtain a relatively large collector current. Really not the same. The base signal controls the collector signal, it does not control the production of the energy. So I don't see how it informs the problem at all.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:29 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: . But my sense tells me that a significant number of scientists are starting to take genuine interest and that they will stay tuned for further details. Read the cold fusion forums for the last 24 years. This has always been someone's sense. And there are occasional blips like the one Rossi caused 2 years ago, which he revived now. But let's look at your sense in a year. My prediction, cold fusion will be at the same place, but you'll have the same sense based on some new claims that are all the rage then.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:45 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, and only in a diesel engine do you not need a battery to keep spark plugs going. Demanding a self-sustaining device is like demanding a diesel engine. ICEs were first developed in the 1860s, and the diesel engine was invented in 1893, several decades later. I don't think that necessarily implies a similar period of development at this time, since we know so much about heat engines. But I think the only reasonable assumption is that it would be nontrivial for Rossi get his device to be self-sustaining. Seriously? Do you really not know how an internal combustion engine works? Have you not used a lawn mower, or a kick-start motorcycle or a pull-start outboard motor. Remember the cranks on model Ts? The engine produces the electricity for the spark, and to charge the battery. Even if the battery were involved in producing the spark (and in some engines it is partially used), the engine charges the battery, so the whole thing is still self-sustaining. I have no problem using a battery (or any number of them) to power the ecat. And if the ecat can charge the battery, I'll happily call it self-sustaining. Man, this place is crawling with ignoramuses.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:54 PM, Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: I think this is more about who is the gatekeeper to the ideology and business of science rather than any exercise in ethics. The gatekeeper class resents this clique of stiff necked maverick scientists who have the temerity to violate the status quo and defies the picking order in their profession. Nah. That's just a true believer fantasy necessary to rationalize the nearly unanimous rejection of something they really really want to be true. Cold fusion was introduced by two very conventional members of the mainstream, and it was rejected anyway.
RE: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Josh: Eric's comment about not needing a battery to keep spark plugs going was referring to a DIESEL engine, and diesels don't have spark plugs. The compression ratio is high enough to cause ignition of the diesel fuel when the piston reaches TDC. They do have 'glow' plugs for starting the engine, but there are no spark plugs as used in a gasoline-powered engine. Do yourself a favor and go play with MaryYugo and the other trolls over at shutdownrossi.com. -Mark From: Joshua Cude [mailto:joshua.c...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 12:08 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:45 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, and only in a diesel engine do you not need a battery to keep spark plugs going. Demanding a self-sustaining device is like demanding a diesel engine. ICEs were first developed in the 1860s, and the diesel engine was invented in 1893, several decades later. I don't think that necessarily implies a similar period of development at this time, since we know so much about heat engines. But I think the only reasonable assumption is that it would be nontrivial for Rossi get his device to be self-sustaining. Seriously? Do you really not know how an internal combustion engine works? Have you not used a lawn mower, or a kick-start motorcycle or a pull-start outboard motor. Remember the cranks on model Ts? The engine produces the electricity for the spark, and to charge the battery. Even if the battery were involved in producing the spark (and in some engines it is partially used), the engine charges the battery, so the whole thing is still self-sustaining. I have no problem using a battery (or any number of them) to power the ecat. And if the ecat can charge the battery, I'll happily call it self-sustaining. Man, this place is crawling with ignoramuses.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
And then there is a class of non-paid sycophant apologists that make it their business to curry favor with the gatekeepers. They divine what the hierarchy wants and proceed to do their best to impress the powers that be. They want to be like them; like a kid who wants to be “Babe Ruth so they mimic all the moves and the attitudes that might reflect on their dreams of glory and approval through doleful imitation. They lack any original ideas and wallow in a quagmire of recrimination hoping to climb the ladder of crony acknowledgment. This pathetic ecosystem is the sad state plaguing scientific politics; This horror is what LENR must face. On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:09 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 10:54 PM, Axil Axil janap...@gmail.com wrote: I think this is more about who is the gatekeeper to the ideology and business of science rather than any exercise in ethics. The gatekeeper class resents this clique of stiff necked maverick scientists who have the temerity to violate the status quo and defies the picking order in their profession. Nah. That's just a true believer fantasy necessary to rationalize the nearly unanimous rejection of something they really really want to be true. Cold fusion was introduced by two very conventional members of the mainstream, and it was rejected anyway.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:32 AM, MarkI-ZeroPoint zeropo...@charter.netwrote: Josh: ** ** Eric’s comment about not needing a battery to keep spark plugs going was referring to a DIESEL engine, and diesels don’t have spark plugs. He said you need a battery for an internal combustion engine, and so that means it's not self-sustaining. That was what I responded to.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 12:07 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Seriously? Do you really not know how an internal combustion engine works? Man, this place is crawling with ignoramuses. ***Sneering. Against the rules.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Hi, On 31-5-2013 4:45, Eric Walker wrote: Yes, and only in a diesel engine do you not need a battery to keep spark plugs going. Call me a nitpicker, but I think it should probably read: Yes, and only in a diesel engine do you not need ANYTHING to keep spark plugs going. Of course, because a diesel engine works with GLOW PLUGS as it doesn't have any spark plugs. But these glow plugs still require electricity generated by an alternator which is connected by a V-belt to the engine. The battery or even better said the ACCU (many European languages use this word; and is shorthand for accumulator) is only needed to start the engine. Kind regards, Rob
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Hi, On 30-5-2013 22:48, Edmund Storms wrote: I agree Dave, I have been providing this explanation for several years without any effect. I'm glad you are adding your voice. The critical point at which the temperature must be reduced depends on the degree of thermal contact between the source of energy (the Ni powder) and the sink (The outside world). The better the thermal contact between these two, the higher the stable temperature and the greater the COP. Rossi has not achieved a COP even close to what is possible. Ok, suppose that it is extremely difficult (I don't want to say impossible, as nothing is impossible) to enhance the thermal contact between the source of energy and the sink, wouldn't it be wise then to put the whole system in a temperature controlled box (let's call it a refrigerator) with a constant temperature to obtain a stable environment for the E-cat? To bring up another analogy it is my understanding that when you have a steam engine and you are turning at several handles and wheels at the same time it is extremely difficult to get the system stable with an optimum output. It sounds to me that Andrea is having a similar problem with the E-cat, he should try to freeze the environment of the E-cat as much as possible and then work on ONE control to gain better COP. Kind regards, Rob
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Josh, I am quite happy to see that you are finally willing to discuss the operation of a positive feedback system. Every one of your points can be addressed and explained. It would be easier to handle only a couple at a time since that would allow us to focus upon the particular issue until you understand why your ideas are in error. With that in mind, please submit for discussion your main reason for discounting my explanation so that it can be properly addressed and everyone who is following this concept can draw their own conclusions. It is my sincere wish that you will eventually understand the process and help to clarify it to other skeptics. I await your concentrated post. Give it your best! Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 2:48 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:23 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: There seems to be a serious hangup over why a heat generating device needs some form of heating input to sustain itself. The skeptics can not seem to get their arms around this issue so I will make another short attempt to explain why this is important. To achieve a high value of COP the ECAT operates within a region that is unstable. This translates into a situation where the device if given the chance will attempt to increase its internal energy until it melts or ceases to operate due to other damage. Control of the device is obtained by adding external heat via the power resistors allowing the core to heat up toward a critical point of no return. Just prior to that critical temperature the extra heating is rapidly halted. The effect of this heating collapse is to force the device core heating to change direction and begin cooling off. I do get the basic idea. The problem is I don't see how to make it work in the latest experiments. The switching would have to be on a pretty slow time scale, because of thermal mass. It would take on the order of minutes for an appreciable change in the internal temperature to result from shutting down the resistors, as is consistent with the rather slow change in temperature in the March experiment. But in the December experiment, there is no switching on this time scale. The power is measured on the lines to the ecat, and they claim the power is constant as recorded by the PCE830 on a 1 second time scale. Also they say that the power output is almost constant on the same time scale. So, I fail to see how that kind of a scheme could work there. The input in that experiment is 360 W applied to the resistors, and that is allegedly enough to trigger the reaction. The total output power is about 2 kW, so that would be 1.6 kW generated by the reactor *inside* the cylinder. If 360 W from outside is enough to trigger the reaction, how can 1.6 kW not be enough to keep it going? I picture someone holding a butane lighter to glowing coals, and expecting them to extinguish when he takes the lighter away. Now, you might discount the December run, but then you'd impugn Levi's integrity, and since he was clearly in charge in March, that makes the whole thing kind of dodgy. But even in the March run, things don't add up. They claim it takes about 800 W to the reactor from the resistors to trigger the reaction. From the geometry, only a fraction of that power will actually be absorbed by the reactor itself. (The rest will be absorbed by the ceramic and the end caps.) The average output from the reactor is also about 800 W, but this is generated inside the reactor, so again, it makes no sense that the reaction would extinguish when you turn the external power off. Furthermore, in all cases, it seems implausible that the output would be that stable without any feedback from the reactor output. Even if the sort of control you talk about were possible, it would require the exact duty cycle to keep the temperature from drifting up or down. And even if Rossi found the right duty cycle, it seems unlikely it would stay the same for 4 days at those temperatures. People are always excusing the absence of progress by suggesting the reaction is so hard to control, but from both these experiments, it appears to be rock stable. That would be the case if the heating were all resistive. The behavior looks nothing like you would expect a new reaction sensitive to temperature would look. Positive feedback can work in either direction; that is, the temperature can be either increasing or decreasing and the trick is to make it go in the desired direction. Are you saying positive can be negative. What's the trick to making it decrease when 1/5 the power makes it increase? The closer to the critical point that Rossi is able to switch directions, the longer the temperature waveform will linger near that point before heading
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On May 31, 2013, at 4:40 AM, Rob Dingemans wrote: Hi, On 30-5-2013 22:48, Edmund Storms wrote: I agree Dave, I have been providing this explanation for several years without any effect. I'm glad you are adding your voice. The critical point at which the temperature must be reduced depends on the degree of thermal contact between the source of energy (the Ni powder) and the sink (The outside world). The better the thermal contact between these two, the higher the stable temperature and the greater the COP. Rossi has not achieved a COP even close to what is possible. Ok, suppose that it is extremely difficult (I don't want to say impossible, as nothing is impossible) to enhance the thermal contact between the source of energy and the sink, wouldn't it be wise then to put the whole system in a temperature controlled box (let's call it a refrigerator) with a constant temperature to obtain a stable environment for the E-cat? Rob, practical use requires two conditions. The heat source must be stable and the resulting temperature of the energy must be high. These two conditions are not directly related. Very good thermal contact with the sink can be achieved while the sink is at high temperature. Nevertheless, the sink temperature, although high, must be stable, which will create another control problem as this source of energy is applied to practical devices. I can predict that this problem will limit the use of CF power. I can anticipate some serious and challenging engineering problems in the future that Rossi is just starting to deal with. Ed Storms To bring up another analogy it is my understanding that when you have a steam engine and you are turning at several handles and wheels at the same time it is extremely difficult to get the system stable with an optimum output. It sounds to me that Andrea is having a similar problem with the E- cat, he should try to freeze the environment of the E-cat as much as possible and then work on ONE control to gain better COP. Kind regards, Rob
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
It is great to see that we are in such close agreement. Let's handle the issues related to positive feedback as I requested and you will improve your understanding. I promise to squawk if I see any attempts by Rossi to fake the process. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 2:58 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:52 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Josh, what is common sense now becomes ancient history when the newest theories come out. Yes, I know that happens sometimes. And sometimes things that are common sense remain common sense. But I think you misunderstood. I was not referring to new science theories there. I was saying that it's common sense that if Rossi's claims were being accepted by the majority, there would be huge excitement. How do you think men learned to fly heavier than air crafts when it was common sense that this was not possible. Like I said, you're arguing a different point, but what the hell. It wasn't common sense that flight was impossible. Everyone saw birds fly, and gliders were already common. And while there were some famous skeptics, and there was some erroneous skepticism of the Wrights specifically, most scientists regarded powered flight as inevitable. That's why the subject was treated seriously by all the major journals, including Science and Nature before the Wright's flight. That's a matter of record. There are better examples to support your argument, but I don't know of a case where a small scale phenomenon like cold fusion was rejected so categorically for a quarter century that was later vindicated. I'm aware of a couple that come close, but they occurred about 150 years ago. You need to realize that all knowledge does not reside within your understanding. I do realize that. But I wonder if you realize that you are not in possession of received wisdom. All of us should be open to learning new concepts and it is about time for you to give LENR a fair chance. It is about time for you to give the bogosity of LENR a fair chance. All your thinking starts from the assumption that it's real. You'll never make progress that way.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Of course it is not the exact same. Positive heat feedback is what we are mainly interested in. You know that, so why bring up the obvious differences? Compare the similarities for an analogy. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 3:02 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 4:47 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: If someone is looking for an analogy they could look at the behavior of a power transistor mounted on a heat sink. For this exercise assume that the collector is directly connected to a power source. Apply enough base drive to obtain a relatively large collector current. Really not the same. The base signal controls the collector signal, it does not control the production of the energy. So I don't see how it informs the problem at all.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Josh, please refrain from insults. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 3:07 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 9:45 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, and only in a diesel engine do you not need a battery to keep spark plugs going. Demanding a self-sustaining device is like demanding a diesel engine. ICEs were first developed in the 1860s, and the diesel engine was invented in 1893, several decades later. I don't think that necessarily implies a similar period of development at this time, since we know so much about heat engines. But I think the only reasonable assumption is that it would be nontrivial for Rossi get his device to be self-sustaining. Seriously? Do you really not know how an internal combustion engine works? Have you not used a lawn mower, or a kick-start motorcycle or a pull-start outboard motor. Remember the cranks on model Ts? The engine produces the electricity for the spark, and to charge the battery. Even if the battery were involved in producing the spark (and in some engines it is partially used), the engine charges the battery, so the whole thing is still self-sustaining. I have no problem using a battery (or any number of them) to power the ecat. And if the ecat can charge the battery, I'll happily call it self-sustaining. Man, this place is crawling with ignoramuses.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Rob, it would be an easier task if Rossi were able to restrict the environment within which his device operates. If he were to pursue this too far, then the applications for which his ECAT can operate are quickly reduced. Now is the time for him to optimize the control system and he appears to be doing just that. The challenges he faces are difficult. Dave -Original Message- From: Rob Dingemans manonbrid...@aim.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 6:40 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question Hi, On 30-5-2013 22:48, Edmund Storms wrote: I agree Dave, I have been providing this explanation for several years without any effect. I'm glad you are adding your voice. The critical point at which the temperature must be reduced depends on the degree of thermal contact between the source of energy (the Ni powder) and the sink (The outside world). The better the thermal contact between these two, the higher the stable temperature and the greater the COP. Rossi has not achieved a COP even close to what is possible. Ok, suppose that it is extremely difficult (I don't want to say impossible, as nothing is impossible) to enhance the thermal contact between the source of energy and the sink, wouldn't it be wise then to put the whole system in a temperature controlled box (let's call it a refrigerator) with a constant temperature to obtain a stable environment for the E-cat? To bring up another analogy it is my understanding that when you have a steam engine and you are turning at several handles and wheels at the same time it is extremely difficult to get the system stable with an optimum output. It sounds to me that Andrea is having a similar problem with the E-cat, he should try to freeze the environment of the E-cat as much as possible and then work on ONE control to gain better COP. Kind regards, Rob
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 6:23 AM, Rob Dingemans manonbrid...@aim.com wrote: Of course, because a diesel engine works with GLOW PLUGS as it doesn't have any spark plugs. But these glow plugs still require electricity generated by an alternator which is connected by a V-belt to the engine. Glow plugs are for starting in cold weather. Before glow plugs, we used ether to start diesels in cold weather.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:40 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Of course it is not the exact same. Positive heat feedback is what we are mainly interested in. You know that, so why bring up the obvious differences? Because it's not positive heat feedback.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:37 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: It is great to see that we are in such close agreement. Let's handle the issues related to positive feedback as I requested and you will improve your understanding. I thought you were keeping an open mind, not a patronizing one that is certain it is in possession of received wisdom. By the way, a long time ago you promised I'd see the truth about the validity of the old steam cats real soon now. How is it that they never got validated and now are abandoned? If 2 more years pass, and this hot cat configuration is abandoned, what will you say then. I'll be here to check up.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:41 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Josh, please refrain from insults. Please refrain from telling me what to refrain from.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:32 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: With that in mind, please submit for discussion your main reason for discounting my explanation so that it can be properly addressed and everyone who is following this concept can draw their own conclusions. It is my sincere wish that you will eventually understand the process and help to clarify it to other skeptics. In other words, you got nothin'. I made my case. Feel free to explain whatever part of it you disagree with. And if you have a chance, can you specify the functional dependence of reaction rate on temperature, and temperature on total power produced that would give the observed behavior and still quench when the external power is shut off (as you say), or melt down (as Jed says).
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Cude, please admit to the obvious. The LENR effect has positive feedback. Increased temperature causes increased power generation. This is an established fact. Of course, if as you believe, CF is not real, than this statement is irrelevant to you and any discussion is a waste of time. Ed Storms On May 31, 2013, at 11:39 AM, Joshua Cude wrote: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:40 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Of course it is not the exact same. Positive heat feedback is what we are mainly interested in. You know that, so why bring up the obvious differences? Because it's not positive heat feedback.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Storms, please read the exchange. I was saying the transistor was not a good analagy because it's not positive thermal feedback. The claim that cold fusion is positive thermal feedback, is the basis of my argument that it should easily self-sustain if there were a COP of 3. On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 12:46 PM, Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.comwrote: Cude, please admit to the obvious. The LENR effect has positive feedback. Increased temperature causes increased power generation. This is an established fact. Of course, if as you believe, CF is not real, than this statement is irrelevant to you and any discussion is a waste of time. Ed Storms On May 31, 2013, at 11:39 AM, Joshua Cude wrote: On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:40 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.comwrote: Of course it is not the exact same. Positive heat feedback is what we are mainly interested in. You know that, so why bring up the obvious differences? Because it's not positive heat feedback.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
What is not positive heat feedback? Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 1:40 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:40 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Of course it is not the exact same. Positive heat feedback is what we are mainly interested in. You know that, so why bring up the obvious differences? Because it's not positive heat feedback.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
No problem, I will meet you here in a couple of years and we can compare notes. Sorry if it came out patronizing, perhaps I was getting a little out of hand due to being inundated with so many unsupported claims. I assure you that I can speak to any of the objections that you have provided they are not totally out of reality. Lets start with one of your choice regarding the many heat generation issues. How about how a small amount of heat can control a much larger amount? Are you interesting in an explanation or do you want to keep stating things that can be shown wrong? Or, how about my favorite recent issue about how DC flowing due to rectification in the load makes the input power measurement inaccurate since it leaves out the RMS value of the DC current? This one is easy to prove wrong. Lets start there, OK? And if you now realize that what I have being saying about the DC is true then at least admit it even though your friends might not like what you are saying. Lets at least put this one issue to bed and off the table. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 1:43 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:37 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: It is great to see that we are in such close agreement. Let's handle the issues related to positive feedback as I requested and you will improve your understanding. I thought you were keeping an open mind, not a patronizing one that is certain it is in possession of received wisdom. By the way, a long time ago you promised I'd see the truth about the validity of the old steam cats real soon now. How is it that they never got validated and now are abandoned? If 2 more years pass, and this hot cat configuration is abandoned, what will you say then. I'll be here to check up.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
I am attempting to keep you form getting banned since I want to use you to clear up a number of issues. It is hoped that you will go back to the other skeptics and then set them straight. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 1:44 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:41 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Josh, please refrain from insults. Please refrain from telling me what to refrain from.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
This is a good start Josh. I think I can explain that to you since you seem to be a pretty sharp guy. Just keep an open mind. The ECAT operates as a device with a positive temperature coefficient with respect to heat. At low temperatures there is little if any extra heat being internally produced by the core. When the drive electronics heats the resistors they conduct heat to the core of the device which rises in temperature as a result. There is a functional relationship between the core temperature and the heat it produces. I have tried numerous functions and they all behave in a somewhat related fashion. The exact one in play by Rossi's device is hidden at this point so don't try to muddy the water by asking for that knowledge since you like to avoid the main issues. The ECAT core finds itself driving a thermal resistance that depends upon the system design. The functional relationship of core heat released versus temperature can be differentiated throughout it operating range. Now, if you take the product of the thermal resistance and the above derivative you will find a temperature above which this result is greater than 1. This is the first temperature which I call critical and is where the positive feedback gain is greater than 1. If the ECAT is left in this region, it can go either higher in temperature with an ever increasing rate toward destruction, or cool off and return back to room temperature. This is the point that it is important for you to acknowledge. Do you accept that this is possible so that we can continue further into the details? If you state that it is not possible for any heat to be generated by the core, then the rest of the discussion is not worth pursuing. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 1:46 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 8:32 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: With that in mind, please submit for discussion your main reason for discounting my explanation so that it can be properly addressed and everyone who is following this concept can draw their own conclusions. It is my sincere wish that you will eventually understand the process and help to clarify it to other skeptics. In other words, you got nothin'. I made my case. Feel free to explain whatever part of it you disagree with. And if you have a chance, can you specify the functional dependence of reaction rate on temperature, and temperature on total power produced that would give the observed behavior and still quench when the external power is shut off (as you say), or melt down (as Jed says).
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:11 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Lets start with one of your choice regarding the many heat generation issues. How about how a small amount of heat can control a much larger amount? I agree this is possible under certain circumstances. But I don't see it in the hot cat. I made the case for why I think it wouldn't work. What part of that case do you disagree with? Or, how about my favorite recent issue about how DC I made no specific claims about dc. I simply said there's enough complexity on the input for one to be suspicious that a deception could work, The cheese video is an example. I'd much rather you explain how a power density 100 times that of uranium in a fission reactor works without melting the nickel, and how a nuclear reaction is triggered by heat, and how nuclear reactions can produce that much heat but no radiation. I know it involves secrets, but them secrets are the basis of tricks too.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Vacuum
*Air + Water Vapor = 9.6 Megatons* (600 Hiroshima Bombs) from the latest
Oklahoma tornado mentioned by scientists
herehttp://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/tornado-powerful-hiroshima-bomb-article-1.1351054
All nature
On Friday, May 31, 2013, Joshua Cude wrote:
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:11 PM, David Roberson
dlrober...@aol.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'dlrober...@aol.com');
wrote:
Lets start with one of your choice regarding the many heat generation
issues. How about how a small amount of heat can control a much larger
amount?
I agree this is possible under certain circumstances. But I don't see it
in the hot cat. I made the case for why I think it wouldn't work. What part
of that case do you disagree with?
Or, how about my favorite recent issue about how DC
I made no specific claims about dc. I simply said there's enough
complexity on the input for one to be suspicious that a deception could
work, The cheese video is an example.
I'd much rather you explain how a power density 100 times that of uranium
in a fission reactor works without melting the nickel, and how a nuclear
reaction is triggered by heat, and how nuclear reactions can produce that
much heat but no radiation. I know it involves secrets, but them secrets
are the basis of tricks too.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Maybe we are making headway in this discussion. Can I assume that you are now saying that the hot cat can actually produce heat by some unknown process? So far it is not clear that you accept this premise. Then, are you agreeing that DC current flowing in the primary due to rectification at a complex load does not contribute to the calculation of power being delivered by that primary? Remember that this is what Duncan Phd EE and Andrew insist is true. Lets set this straight here and now by you agreeing that it is not good theory. You can then explain it to them on your other sites. And better yet, you will avoid stating it in the future. I have not personally been following the energy density so I must leave that discussion to those with more knowledge. No one really knows exactly how LENR works including me so that is unfair to ask of me. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 2:39 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:11 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: Lets start with one of your choice regarding the many heat generation issues. How about how a small amount of heat can control a much larger amount? I agree this is possible under certain circumstances. But I don't see it in the hot cat. I made the case for why I think it wouldn't work. What part of that case do you disagree with? Or, how about my favorite recent issue about how DC I made no specific claims about dc. I simply said there's enough complexity on the input for one to be suspicious that a deception could work, The cheese video is an example. I'd much rather you explain how a power density 100 times that of uranium in a fission reactor works without melting the nickel, and how a nuclear reaction is triggered by heat, and how nuclear reactions can produce that much heat but no radiation. I know it involves secrets, but them secrets are the basis of tricks too.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 12:36 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: He said you need a battery for an internal combustion engine, and so that means it's not self-sustaining. That was what I responded to. My point was a valid one. It's that for a regular ICE you need a secondary source of power to drive the spark plugs (where in a diesel engine you do not after the engine gets going). It does not matter to me whether you acknowledge that it is a valid point, because you appear to have switched over into disputation mode. I mention the point because I thought it might be interesting for others. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: Glow plugs are for starting in cold weather. Before glow plugs, we used ether to start diesels in cold weather. In the Russian winter during WWII they would start tractor engines and tank engines by dumping gasoline on them and igniting it. They tried that with U.S. lend lease equipment, and destroyed it. They complained this American stuff doesn't hold up! My dad was there, trying to persuade them to read the instructions. They also tried running a high-tech lend lease factory before the analog computer controls showed up. Moscow ordered them to run it with manual controls. They did, and wrecked it. So they took the factory director out in the yard, assembled a firing squad, and shot him. For some reason, they had a hard time finding someone to replace him. You don't want to know what they did with DC3 airplanes. It wasn't pretty. It was clear how them managed to lose 20 million people while killing 2 million Germans. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: My point was a valid one. It's that for a regular ICE you need a secondary source of power to drive the spark plugs (where in a diesel engine you do not after the engine gets going). Just to clarify the point (for others), in an ICE, there is mechanical energy that can easily be converted into electricity to recharge the battery. In Rossi's device, assuming it is driven by joule heating (as I have no reason to doubt), you would have to capture the heat coming from the device and figure a way to route it back to the secondary source of power (analogous to the battery in the ICE). As we all know, this is not so easy to do, so while the ICE is a good analogy, in that it demonstrates why a secondary source of power might be necessary, the analogy only goes so far, in that it is harder in Rossi's case to recapture the heat and channel it back into the secondary source. I think this is all pretty obvious to anyone who has given some thought to the matter and who is seeking after truth. I just wanted to tie off one or two loose ends. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
You will get it right one day. I am just kidding as you probably detected Eric. Actually, it might not be too easy for Rossi to operate his device with just a generator attached to some type of steam turbine. With the present COP of 6 the device might experience difficulty delivering the peak power required for the drive resistor heating. If we assume that the steam turbine-generator has an efficiency of 33%, there would be about two times the power required to drive the ECAT available in electrical form at its output. Unfortunately the heating must be delivered in pulses that are at a duty cycle of 33 % in this particular experiment. A quick calculation suggests that the peak heating needed for the control resistors is approximately equal to 1.5 times all of the electrical power being generated for that period of time. This will lead to a power deficit during the heating period. External power is available during the other 2/3 of the period and in fact that likely would have to be drawn to keep the generator operating at a smooth pace. To accomplish this feat, I believe that Rossi will need a form of energy storage such as a battery or the local power mains to source and draw power from. Once the ECAT system is running with the proper load handling, it will exhibit an overall system COP of infinity as Jed likes to point out. This post was put together with a modest amount of consideration and I would appreciate it if others would correct any obvious errors that I have committed. Dave -Original Message- From: Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, May 31, 2013 8:32 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: My point was a valid one. It's that for a regular ICE you need a secondary source of power to drive the spark plugs (where in a diesel engine you do not after the engine gets going). Just to clarify the point (for others), in an ICE, there is mechanical energy that can easily be converted into electricity to recharge the battery. In Rossi's device, assuming it is driven by joule heating (as I have no reason to doubt), you would have to capture the heat coming from the device and figure a way to route it back to the secondary source of power (analogous to the battery in the ICE). As we all know, this is not so easy to do, so while the ICE is a good analogy, in that it demonstrates why a secondary source of power might be necessary, the analogy only goes so far, in that it is harder in Rossi's case to recapture the heat and channel it back into the secondary source. I think this is all pretty obvious to anyone who has given some thought to the matter and who is seeking after truth. I just wanted to tie off one or two loose ends. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:37 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: I'm not talking about initiating. I'm talking about sustaining. I have no problem using electricity to initiate the ecat. But if it's a source of energy, it should behave like one and be able to at least power itself. A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. In addition to the wood fuel, oxygen must be supplied. A battery is used to start a car engine, but not to sustain it. In addition to the gasoline fuel, oxygen must be supplied. If the ecat must be self-sustaining to be considered a credible source of power, then a campfire or a car engine should not be accepted as credible sources of power because they don't make their own oxygen. I would consider the firewood + oxygen or the car engine + oxygen as the devices that are self-sustaining. One can certainly enclose oxygen with an engine or with chemical fuel to make a self-contained thing that self-sustains, if you have trouble with the abstract notion of a device that includes gases present in the atmosphere as part of its definition. Oxygen is not an energy source, so it does not represent energy input. We tend to identify gasoline, firewood and hydrogen as energy sources because we take oxygen for granted since it surrounds us. However, they are only fuels. The energy source is the combustion of oxygen and the fuel. The Saturn V rocket's energy source is liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The astronauts did not get to the moon on hydrogen alone. http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/img/getty/6/5/3224965.jpg Including the ac mains as part of the ecat is different though because that is an energy source by itself, and the goal of the ecat is to replace the power source that provides the mains. If the ecat is like a rocket then its power is derived from two inputs. The first input is a metal hydride and the second input is electricity. Perhaps in time the ecat can made self-powering as more is learned about it, but expecting that now is like expecting the first inventors of friction created fire to know the science of combustion. Harry
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:52 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.comwrote: As dave explains it makes sense if the energy input provides cooling power. Exactly. The whole thing is nuts. If it really needed to be regulated, it would make sense to regulate with temperature controlled cooling. During the tests convective air flow was helping to cool the reactor. The speed of the air flow would be influenced by the surface temperature of the reactor.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 3:52 PM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.comwrote: Josh, what is common sense now becomes ancient history when the newest theories come out. Yes, I know that happens sometimes. And sometimes things that are common sense remain common sense. But I think you misunderstood. I was not referring to new science theories there. I was saying that it's common sense that if Rossi's claims were being accepted by the majority, there would be huge excitement. Not necessarily. Sometimes people act in accordance with the rule Once bitten, twice shy. Ian Hunter - Once Bitten Twice Shy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzuIPCjsy9I Harry
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Right, the brethren has so far brought us fission reactors, nuclear bombs
and hot fu$ion, crowning achievements for our children
Stewart
On Thursday, May 30, 2013, Eric Walker wrote:
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Jed Rothwell
jedrothw...@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'jedrothw...@gmail.com');
wrote:
The engineers at Elforsk disagree with Cude. They do not think this was
a farce. They know much more about measuring energy and electricity than he
does, so I suppose they are correct and he is wrong.
This is, unfortunately, proof of their being out of their depth. They
would do well to consult their brethren in physics in order to forestall
their future abasement and to allow them to be led back to the straight and
narrow.
Eric
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:51 AM, ChemE Stewart cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Right, the brethren has so far brought us fission reactors, nuclear bombs and hot fu$ion, crowning achievements for our children I should clarify that I was trying to reproduce the inevitable and circular logic that some people will draw upon in order to respond to the point Jed made about Elforsk's engineers liking the May 2013 test. I should also add that I have nothing against physicists; I'm just using a little rhetorical exaggeration about engineers versus physicists in order to tendentiously make a point. This is in connection with what I wrote here: This is, unfortunately, proof of their being out of their depth. They would do well to consult their brethren in physics in order to forestall their future abasement and to allow them to be led back to the straight and narrow.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Cool, this phenom obviously requires a lot of heads from different
disciplines to figure it out since it does not appear to follow the
straight and narrow from what I see.
On Thursday, May 30, 2013, Eric Walker wrote:
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:51 AM, ChemE Stewart
cheme...@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'cheme...@gmail.com');
wrote:
Right, the brethren has so far brought us fission reactors, nuclear bombs
and hot fu$ion, crowning achievements for our children
I should clarify that I was trying to reproduce the inevitable and
circular logic that some people will draw upon in order to respond to the
point Jed made about Elforsk's engineers liking the May 2013 test. I
should also add that I have nothing against physicists; I'm just using a
little rhetorical exaggeration about engineers versus physicists in order
to tendentiously make a point.
This is in connection with what I wrote here:
This is, unfortunately, proof of their being out of their depth. They
would do well to consult their brethren in physics in order to forestall
their future abasement and to allow them to be led back to the straight and
narrow.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: The monitoring of the input was comically inadequate, if there is any possibility of deception, the blank run used a different power regimen, the claims of power density 100 times that of nuclear fuel without cooling and without melting are totally implausible, the lack of calorimetry is completely inexplicable. I don't see how you come to that conclusion. I get the impression the input monitoring was actually pretty good, and that there have been some crossed signals with different authors of the report as to what measurements were actually carried out. This situation in itself is comical. The paper should report the relevant measurements and checks that were needed. The fact that they are coming back after the fact with various and contradictory and incomplete claims shows that it's a farce. I don't see how measurements with a PCE830 can be considered pretty good, when there are obvious and easy ways to get power past it. Once that is acknowledged, the question is whether he's simply being squirmy, or whether he's doing something more. I rather like the fact that people here generally proceed on an assumption of innocence until such an assumption becomes untenable. For many of us, that point was passed a long time ago, particularly because he chooses equivocal methods, when it would be easy to make an unequivocal demonstration. Such a thing could have been done in a trivially easy way with the original ecat. Just the fact that he's abandoned that before it was proven, and moved to an entirely new equivocal demonstration makes the assumption untenable The fact that the alternative is almost as unlikely as cheese power, makes it's untenableness virtually certain.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Rob Dingemans manonbrid...@aim.com wrote: Hi, You probably know the famous saying First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. It seems we are currently in the second stage and my instinct tells me we might soon be entering the next stage. Variations of this saying have been used to defend cold fusion for 24 years. We're always entering the next stage real soon now. Maybe you've also heard the saying, To be a persecuted genius, it's not enough to be persecuted.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: That's not the opinion of the majority of observers of the case. Deception on this scale -- frauds and scams -- are utterly common. Scientific revolutions like this are very rare, especially from someone like Rossi. Perhaps. But I think we should refrain from speaking on behalf of most observers (or scientists, or physicists) until a systematic poll is carried out. That's not necessary. A lot of people have seen these claims now. If a majority of observers felt that the likely explanation at this point is that there's could be some new science to be worked out, there would be an epidemic growth of interest; a stampede like in 1989, to mix the metaphor. That has not happened.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: The engineers at Elforsk disagree with Cude. They do not think this was a farce. They know much more about measuring energy and electricity than he does, so I suppose they are correct and he is wrong. It doesn't really matter to me how much they or the 7 authors know. I need to be convinced based on what I know, and I'm not. And didn't the engineers at the Swedish Standards Institute test this configuration without success. Have those engineers given an opinion on the latest test? They know more than me too. There are a lot of people smarter and more knowledgeable than you who nevertheless disagree with you about cold fusion. I'm sure you wouldn't argue that that means they are correct and you are wrong. (Though it is almost certainly true in this case.)
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: First, the fact that this *source* of energy thousands of times more dense than chemical has to be plugged in (to a high power line, no less) will turn most observers away. Fine, so most observers will be turned away by this. From an engineering perspective, I see perfectly good reasons for it. Perhaps that puts me and anyone else who agrees in the minority of observers. I have not seen perfectly good reasons for it. The reasons given that you need input heat to control the heat seem like an excuse to keep the power connected to me. Is there another example of a reaction triggered by heat that is regulated by the addition of heat? This is particularly implausible since Rossi has been claiming his devices are ready for commercial sale. Wasn't something supposed to go on sale this month, forgetting about the previous claimed sales? A device with a COP of 3 is not better than a heat pump. And the moment you can make something significantly better than a heat pump, you can use it to make electricity to close the loop. Never happens though.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: First, the fact that this *source* of energy thousands of times more dense than chemical has to be plugged in (to a high power line, no less) will turn most observers away. Fine, so most observers will be turned away by this. From an engineering perspective, I see perfectly good reasons for it. It seems like a useful filter. Observers who turn away for this reason do not understand the claim. They do not understand energy. It is better for everyone if they turn away at an early stage. No. Observers who accept this claim are far too gullible. It's true input could be present in a proof of principle demo. But Rossi's been claiming commercial ready devices for more than 2 years. No device with a COP of 3 is going to make a significant impact. If Rossi is claiming a revolutionary new *source* of energy, he should be able to demonstrate it without depending on another energy source, other than to initiate it. And when he can't he loses confidence even in the proof of principle demo, especially when it's a thermal-to-thermal conversion.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:20 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: ** ** *From:* Joshua Cude ** ** First, the fact that this *source* of energy thousands of times more dense than chemical has to be plugged in (to a high power line, no less) will turn most observers away. ** ** Not necessarily “most” - only those observers whose ability to deduce and extrapolate from experience is severely challenged. ** ** For instance, an atomic bomb is initiated by a chemical explosion, and it is thousands of time more energy dense. I'm not talking about initiating. I'm talking about sustaining. I have no problem using electricity to initiate the ecat. But if it's a source of energy, it should behave like one and be able to at least power itself. A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. A battery is used to start a car engine, but not to sustain it. And a chemical explosion is used to initiate a fission bomb. But once initiated, it sustains itself using the chain reaction until the fuel is dispersed below critical mass. This is abundantly clear in a nuclear power plant, where the reaction requires no input energy to sustain itself. (And the energy density of the biggest fission bomb deployed (counting it's total weight) was 100,000 times that of chemical, and the energy density of the uranium fuel itself was in the millions.) A hydrogen bomb is initiated by and atomic bomb explosion, and it is a thousand times more energy dense. ** The fission bomb initiates fusion, and the fusion and fission then sustain each other, but again, once it's initiated, it's self-sustaining. (And the energy density is only 10 to 100 times that of the best fission bombs.) Moreover, fusion power will not be considered a success until ignition is achieved (and not even then), which represents the point where the reaction sustains itself, even if only on a tiny scale in the case of inertial fusion. ** Most observers do not have much difficulty extrapolating from that kind of known phenomenon - into another kind of mass-to-energy conversion, requiring a substantial trigger. ** Except extrapolation of those known phenomena should end in an energy source that is self-sustaining. The ecat isn't. ** In any event - “thousands of times” more dense is not accurate IMO – closer to 200 times. ** Not sure it's really a matter of opinion. The claim in Levi's paper is 6e7 Wh/kg, which is a few thousand times the energy density of gasoline and more than a thousand times that of hydrogen. That's what I was referring to. And they say they stopped the reaction before it was exhausted. The potential energy density if it's coming from nuclear reactions is millions of times chemical. ** If you understand “recalescence” and then can extrapolate to a reaction which is recycled around the phase change, then the rationale of adding energy to gain energy is more understandable. This is a phenomenon of phase change seen every day in a steel mill. ** Except that recycling around a phase change is not going to net any energy, and it has no similarity to what's allegedly happening in the ecat. There, according to the authors, an exothermic reaction is triggered by heat. And if 400 W from the outside of the reactor cylinder can initiated the reaction, I don't see how 1.5 kW from inside the reactor could not sustain it. Ordinary combustion is triggered by heat, and generates heat, and that's how it sustains itself. No one ever talks about COPs with coal or oil or gasoline. The only way I can think of to contrive a similar kind of need of a smaller external source of heat to sustain a larger source of heat is if the external source is more concentrated and hotter. But that's clearly not the case in the hot cat, where the external source is diffuse and at a lower temperature. ** Next, to complete the explanation - we will need to demonstrate how mass is converted into energy in a order one-time recalescence event to look like a succession of events. ** Could I have a raspberry vinaigrette with that word salad, please. No matter what lame excuse you or anyone else can dig up to allow Rossi to use input power to sustain the ecat, for it to revolutionize energy, it will have to substantially exceed the COP of a heat pump, and that will allow closing the loop using perfectly standard technology. Since he already claims to be market-ready, failure to run the thing on it's own makes it look like a farce.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Joshua: You make that point all the time. It is one of your favorites, but it is really unsupported speculation and not worth considering. First, telling us how the majority of observers feel about the report is clearly beyond your knowledge. As Eric suggested making those claims without proof (poll, census, etc.) is not only unscientific it is undoubtedly just self serving on your part. You must recognize that it doesn't mean anything to those reading your critiques, unless they don't think critically. Second, this isn't 1989. Most scientists who read the report are aware of the history. The idea that we will have a repeat of 1989 is unlikely. The scientific community passed up the opportunity to investigate this science long ago and are now at the mercy of the entrepreneur, if it is real. I can speculate just as you. My speculation is that based on this report the scientific community will likely pay more attention to the developments in this area and will await further testing and other disclosures before taking active steps to investigate. Some might begin doing some testing and in fact that has probably occurred since Rossi first presented his demo, but most will likely wait and watch. However, I doubt they will conclude as you do that the report is meaningless. But that is mere speculation, no different than yours. One thing I am certain about is that you don't speak for the scientific community. If you do, please identify by what authority you achieved that role and position and I will stand corrected. Ransom - Original Message - From: Joshua Cude To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 12:09 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: That's not the opinion of the majority of observers of the case. Deception on this scale -- frauds and scams -- are utterly common. Scientific revolutions like this are very rare, especially from someone like Rossi. Perhaps. But I think we should refrain from speaking on behalf of most observers (or scientists, or physicists) until a systematic poll is carried out. That's not necessary. A lot of people have seen these claims now. If a majority of observers felt that the likely explanation at this point is that there's could be some new science to be worked out, there would be an epidemic growth of interest; a stampede like in 1989, to mix the metaphor. That has not happened. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2242 / Virus Database: 3184/5869 - Release Date: 05/30/13
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 10:12:17 AM And didn't the engineers at the Swedish Standards Institute test this configuration without success. Have those engineers given an opinion on the latest test? They know more than me too. They terminated the test because Rossi wasn't using a true RMS meter, which would under-estimate energy at the low end of the Triac's dimmer waveform. Hence the use of the wide-band meter. But a large part of the aborted test appeared to be running at full RMS power, ie NO error, with an on/off duty cycle similar to the current run.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 10:13:43 AM I have not seen perfectly good reasons for it. The reasons given that you need input heat to control the heat seem like an excuse to keep the power connected to me. Is there another example of a reaction triggered by heat that is regulated by the addition of heat? Most likely. And staying with COP=6 is the stable zone. (See the November melt-down). A device with a COP of 3 is not better than a heat pump. That's for MARCH, which was intentionally run at lower power, choosing stability over COP. The December test (which you reject because you don't know what paint was used -- emissivity likely to be around 0.9) had a COP=6. Rossi says he's working on an interface to a Siemens(?) turbine. That would be COP=6 * 30% efficiency for electricity, PLUS 70% heat for a combined-generation capability. Even then I don't think you a sensible engineer would want to feed it straight back, again for stability reasons, without maybe an intermediate bank of batteries. I'm sure that if the tokomak hot fusion guys ever get more the 2kWh (current record) out of their system, that you'll demand they feed their own power back. (OK, OK .. so we're talking about physical impossibilites vs Engineering impossibilities)
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Randy wuller rwul...@freeark.com wrote: ** Joshua: First, telling us how the majority of observers feel about the report is clearly beyond your knowledge. As Eric suggested making those claims without proof (poll, census, etc.) is not only unscientific it is undoubtedly just self serving on your part. Garbage. Everyone, including skeptics, repeatedly sings about the revolution this would bring if real. And many people have seen the claims, now. If they believed them, they would not ignore it. The scientific community passed up the opportunity to investigate this science long ago and are now at the mercy of the entrepreneur, if it is real. Nah, they gave it far more attention than it deserved, and concluded there was nothing there, and moved on. One thing I am certain about is that you don't speak for the scientific community. You're right about that. I'm only expressing what is common sense to all but the true believers.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:55 PM, Alan Fletcher a...@well.com wrote: From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 10:12:17 AM And didn't the engineers at the Swedish Standards Institute test this configuration without success. Have those engineers given an opinion on the latest test? They know more than me too. They terminated the test because Rossi wasn't using a true RMS meter, which would under-estimate energy at the low end of the Triac's dimmer waveform. Hence the use of the wide-band meter. But a large part of the aborted test appeared to be running at full RMS power, ie NO error, with an on/off duty cycle similar to the current run. It's comical that there is quibbling like this about such trivialities with a revolution waiting in the wings. This was the better part of a year ago, and no progress since? How is that possible?
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Alan Fletcher a...@well.com wrote: A device with a COP of 3 is not better than a heat pump. That's for MARCH, which was intentionally run at lower power, choosing stability over COP. Right. Three months of technical improvements gave a worse COP. The December test (which you reject because you don't know what paint was used -- emissivity likely to be around 0.9) had a COP=6. Well, everyone's counting the Swedes to give credibility, and they weren't there. The December test is as credible as Levi's 18-hour test. That was far better power output, better COP, and a simpler experiment. Just you have to trust Levi, just like here. So they're moving backwards. Rossi says he's working on an interface to a Siemens(?) turbine. That would be COP=6 * 30% efficiency for electricity, PLUS 70% heat for a combined-generation capability. Sure. He's been saying that for 2 years. Even then I don't think you a sensible engineer would want to feed it straight back, again for stability reasons, without maybe an intermediate bank of batteries. Stabilizing electricity is not a new trick. I'm sure that if the tokomak hot fusion guys ever get more the 2kWh (current record) out of their system, that you'll demand they feed their own power back. The hot fusion guys have not claimed over unity. They don't need it to prove they've got fusion, though. But yes, it will not be considered a success until ignition is achieved, and it can at least power itself. When cold fusion can power itself, it might get some attention.
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Cude: You seem to be morphing into troll mode. Reasonable discussions with you are apparently at an end. Ransom - Original Message - From: Joshua Cude To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 1:22 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Randy wuller rwul...@freeark.com wrote: Joshua: First, telling us how the majority of observers feel about the report is clearly beyond your knowledge. As Eric suggested making those claims without proof (poll, census, etc.) is not only unscientific it is undoubtedly just self serving on your part. Garbage. Everyone, including skeptics, repeatedly sings about the revolution this would bring if real. And many people have seen the claims, now. If they believed them, they would not ignore it. The scientific community passed up the opportunity to investigate this science long ago and are now at the mercy of the entrepreneur, if it is real. Nah, they gave it far more attention than it deserved, and concluded there was nothing there, and moved on. One thing I am certain about is that you don't speak for the scientific community. You're right about that. I'm only expressing what is common sense to all but the true believers. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2242 / Virus Database: 3184/5869 - Release Date: 05/30/13
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not talking about initiating. I'm talking about sustaining. I have no problem using electricity to initiate the ecat. But if it's a source of energy, it should behave like one and be able to at least power itself. A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. In addition to the wood fuel, oxygen must be supplied. A battery is used to start a car engine, but not to sustain it. In addition to the gasoline fuel, oxygen must be supplied. If the ecat must be self-sustaining to be considered a credible source of power, then a campfire or a car engine should not be accepted as credible sources of power because they don't make their own oxygen. harry
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com mailto:joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. Cold fusion is not fire. It does not work the same way. Evidently, Rossi's reactor requires external stimulation to keep the reaction under control. That's how it works. You cannot dictate to Mother Nature how things must work. If you unplug a Rossi cell and try to make it self-sustain without input, it will melt. An analogy to fire may be useful to understanding, but you cannot engineer a reactor based on analogies. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
There seems to be a serious hangup over why a heat generating device needs some form of heating input to sustain itself. The skeptics can not seem to get their arms around this issue so I will make another short attempt to explain why this is important. To achieve a high value of COP the ECAT operates within a region that is unstable. This translates into a situation where the device if given the chance will attempt to increase its internal energy until it melts or ceases to operate due to other damage. Control of the device is obtained by adding external heat via the power resistors allowing the core to heat up toward a critical point of no return. Just prior to that critical temperature the extra heating is rapidly halted. The effect of this heating collapse is to force the device core heating to change direction and begin cooling off. Positive feedback can work in either direction; that is, the temperature can be either increasing or decreasing and the trick is to make it go in the desired direction. The closer to the critical point that Rossi is able to switch directions, the longer the temperature waveform will linger near that point before heading downward. This is a delicate balance and most likely the reason Rossi has such a difficult fight on his hands to keep control. High COP, such as 6, is about all that can be safely maintained. The explanation above is based upon a spice model that I have developed and run many times. Statements by Rossi on his blog have been consistent with the performance that I observe with the model. It is important to realize that a device such as this does not operate in a simple manner such as that anticipated by the skeptics. I suppose that is why they fail to understand Rossi's machine. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, May 30, 2013 1:26 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:20 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: From:Joshua Cude First, thefact that this *source* of energy thousands of times more dense than chemicalhas to be plugged in (to a high power line, no less) will turn most observersaway. Not necessarily “most” - onlythose observers whose ability to deduce and extrapolate from experience isseverely challenged. For instance, an atomicbomb is initiated by a chemical explosion, and it is thousands of time moreenergy dense. I'm not talking about initiating. I'm talking about sustaining. I have no problem using electricity to initiate the ecat. But if it's a source of energy, it should behave like one and be able to at least power itself. A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. A battery is used to start a car engine, but not to sustain it. And a chemical explosion is used to initiate a fission bomb. But once initiated, it sustains itself using the chain reaction until the fuel is dispersed below critical mass. This is abundantly clear in a nuclear power plant, where the reaction requires no input energy to sustain itself. (And the energy density of the biggest fission bomb deployed (counting it's total weight) was 100,000 times that of chemical, and the energy density of the uranium fuel itself was in the millions.) A hydrogen bomb is initiated by and atomic bomb explosion, and itis a thousand times more energy dense. The fission bomb initiates fusion, and the fusion and fission then sustain each other, but again, once it's initiated, it's self-sustaining. (And the energy density is only 10 to 100 times that of the best fission bombs.) Moreover, fusion power will not be considered a success until ignition is achieved (and not even then), which represents the point where the reaction sustains itself, even if only on a tiny scale in the case of inertial fusion. Most observers do not havemuch difficulty extrapolating from that kind of known phenomenon - into anotherkind of mass-to-energy conversion, requiring a substantial trigger. Except extrapolation of those known phenomena should end in an energy source that is self-sustaining. The ecat isn't. In any event - “thousandsof times” more dense is not accurate IMO – closer to 200 times. Not sure it's really a matter of opinion. The claim in Levi's paper is 6e7 Wh/kg, which is a few thousand times the energy density of gasoline and more than a thousand times that of hydrogen. That's what I was referring to. And they say they stopped the reaction before it was exhausted. The potential energy density if it's coming from nuclear reactions is millions of times chemical. If you understand “recalescence”and then can extrapolate to a reaction which is recycled around the phasechange
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
I wrote: . . . If you unplug a Rossi cell and try to make it self-sustain without input, it will melt. An analogy to fire may be useful to understanding, but you cannot engineer a reactor based on analogies. If we are going to do analogies, a more useful one would be to compare the Rossi reactor to an internal combustion engine ICE. With an ICE you have to apply the spark periodically to small portions of the fuel to trigger the reaction. Cude is demanding we find a way to ignite the entire tank of fuel with the spark plug once, and then have the car run normally after that. This does not work. The car goes up in flames, similar to the way Rossi's reactor melts. Actually, the Rossi reactor is sort of an anti-ICE, or a reverse-ICE. It would seem the spark does not trigger the reaction, but rather, it suppresses the reaction. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
As dave explains it makes sense if the energy input provides cooling power. Harry On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: I wrote: . . . If you unplug a Rossi cell and try to make it self-sustain without input, it will melt. An analogy to fire may be useful to understanding, but you cannot engineer a reactor based on analogies. If we are going to do analogies, a more useful one would be to compare the Rossi reactor to an internal combustion engine ICE. With an ICE you have to apply the spark periodically to small portions of the fuel to trigger the reaction. Cude is demanding we find a way to ignite the entire tank of fuel with the spark plug once, and then have the car run normally after that. This does not work. The car goes up in flames, similar to the way Rossi's reactor melts. Actually, the Rossi reactor is sort of an anti-ICE, or a reverse-ICE. It would seem the spark does not trigger the reaction, but rather, it suppresses the reaction. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question
I agree Dave, I have been providing this explanation for several years without any effect. I'm glad you are adding your voice. The critical point at which the temperature must be reduced depends on the degree of thermal contact between the source of energy (the Ni powder) and the sink (The outside world). The better the thermal contact between these two, the higher the stable temperature and the greater the COP. Rossi has not achieved a COP even close to what is possible. Ed Storms On May 30, 2013, at 2:23 PM, David Roberson wrote: There seems to be a serious hangup over why a heat generating device needs some form of heating input to sustain itself. The skeptics can not seem to get their arms around this issue so I will make another short attempt to explain why this is important. To achieve a high value of COP the ECAT operates within a region that is unstable. This translates into a situation where the device if given the chance will attempt to increase its internal energy until it melts or ceases to operate due to other damage. Control of the device is obtained by adding external heat via the power resistors allowing the core to heat up toward a critical point of no return. Just prior to that critical temperature the extra heating is rapidly halted. The effect of this heating collapse is to force the device core heating to change direction and begin cooling off. Positive feedback can work in either direction; that is, the temperature can be either increasing or decreasing and the trick is to make it go in the desired direction. The closer to the critical point that Rossi is able to switch directions, the longer the temperature waveform will linger near that point before heading downward. This is a delicate balance and most likely the reason Rossi has such a difficult fight on his hands to keep control. High COP, such as 6, is about all that can be safely maintained. The explanation above is based upon a spice model that I have developed and run many times. Statements by Rossi on his blog have been consistent with the performance that I observe with the model. It is important to realize that a device such as this does not operate in a simple manner such as that anticipated by the skeptics. I suppose that is why they fail to understand Rossi's machine. Dave -Original Message- From: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, May 30, 2013 1:26 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ethics of the E-Cat investigation put into question On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 3:20 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: From: Joshua Cude First, the fact that this *source* of energy thousands of times more dense than chemical has to be plugged in (to a high power line, no less) will turn most observers away. Not necessarily “most” - only those observers whose ability to deduce and extrapolate from experience is severely challenged. For instance, an atomic bomb is initiated by a chemical explosion, and it is thousands of time more energy dense. I'm not talking about initiating. I'm talking about sustaining. I have no problem using electricity to initiate the ecat. But if it's a source of energy, it should behave like one and be able to at least power itself. A match is needed to ignite a firecracker, but once ignited, the explosion sustains itself. A match is needed to start a campfire, but not to sustain it. A battery is used to start a car engine, but not to sustain it. And a chemical explosion is used to initiate a fission bomb. But once initiated, it sustains itself using the chain reaction until the fuel is dispersed below critical mass. This is abundantly clear in a nuclear power plant, where the reaction requires no input energy to sustain itself. (And the energy density of the biggest fission bomb deployed (counting it's total weight) was 100,000 times that of chemical, and the energy density of the uranium fuel itself was in the millions.) A hydrogen bomb is initiated by and atomic bomb explosion, and it is a thousand times more energy dense. The fission bomb initiates fusion, and the fusion and fission then sustain each other, but again, once it's initiated, it's self- sustaining. (And the energy density is only 10 to 100 times that of the best fission bombs.) Moreover, fusion power will not be considered a success until ignition is achieved (and not even then), which represents the point where the reaction sustains itself, even if only on a tiny scale in the case of inertial fusion. Most observers do not have much difficulty extrapolating from that kind of known phenomenon - into another kind of mass-to-energy conversion, requiring a substantial trigger. Except extrapolation of those known phenomena should end in an energy source that is self-sustaining. The ecat isn't. In any event - “thousands of times” more dense
