On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
> > It does not matter what rate you add the heat. The flow rate of the water > is unimportant. It might be stopped altogether. > > It takes a certain amount of energy to keep the surface of the reactor at > 80°C for four hours. Right. But Lewan said 60 - 80C, and I'm guessing since he's an advocate, it was probably closer to 60C, which is about 30C above ambient in that room. A hot-water radiator 30C above ambient delivers about 70 BTU/(hr-sq ft (effective area)), or about 200 W/m^2. That ecat has about 1 m^2 surface exposed, and it's not designed to throw heat, so its insulating surface is likely to have a lower emissivity, but even if it's 200 W, that's only a fraction of what you can store in 100 kg for 3.25 hours, which can easily be a few kW. And at 200 W, that would put about 10 kW into Rossi's megacat. That's more heat than most sauna heaters throw, and yet no one mentioned it was hot in there at all. So, I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near 200 W heat loss per ecat. > That amount of energy far exceeds the amount that you could store or add > to that mass of water and iron, The water's not relevant because the heat stored in it is not changed over the 3.25 hours. As for storing 200W times 3.25 hours (2.3 MJ) in 100 kg of metal? Piece of cake. In other materials, even easier.
