You brought up a subject that has been on my mind recently. It would be better to have an ECAT that operates about half way between the two under discussion. The Hotcat is too hot to handle while the normal ECAT runs a bit too cool.
One that operates at 500 to 600 C would be perfect for electricity generation and would not require the exotic materials. Heat transfer between the device and a working fluid would become fairly traditional at the modest temperatures as well. I suppose the main function that would be lost is the future direct conversion of heat into electricity which is likely much more efficient at the higher temperature. As you seem to imply, Rossi never mentions the Hotcat in any of his blog entries other than saying that the replication by Parkhomov is interesting. That might be due to his continuing desire to keep folks from researching more typical ECAT type devices. The work by Parkhomov is showing a great deal of promise and the results of his experiments are beginning to shine light upon the internal processes, at least in the Hotcat design. I suspect that the same basic concepts are acting within the regular ECAT as well. My favorite thermal feedback curve should apply in either type of device so it will be easy to understand when the feedback factor reaches an interesting level. There remains plenty of fight left within the Parkhomov replication for all of us to remain entertained. I look forward to the release of the most recent data. It is going to be exciting to figure out how to keep one of them under adequate control when it is designed to operate with a negative resistance region included. Type 1 is too simple and the COP is too low. Give us a solid type 2 and we can begin our celebration. :-) Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jones Beene <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Feb 12, 2015 3:34 pm Subject: RE: [Vo]:Possible advantage of running dogbone type reactor at 181 C BTW – one of the mysteries of Ni-H or more precisely, Ni-Li-H - now that a robust high temperature version has appeared, and seems to have been replicated by Parkhomov - is why anyone would be interested in the low temperature version. The low temperature version would be relegated to mundane space heating, as opposed to higher value-added applications like transportation. Yet Rossi himself seems to have abandoned the HT in favor of the original version -- and the infamous blue box, which only produces hot water and wet steam. One answer to this enigma is that Ikegami’s reaction, using liquid lithium and protons in a resonance mode at the lithium phase change - will actually produce a higher COP than the hot version - even if the base reaction is limited to a maximum of around 181 C. That is a bit ironic, if true. It all depends on how much one believes Ikegami et al. Obviously, Ikegami is “hot fusion carried out at warm temperature” instead of cold fusion, and he sees MeV particles – which doesn’t happen in cold fusion - so the gain is much higher. That is a semantic distinction of course, but it also differentiates devices like the Farnsworth Fusor from LENR. The Fusor is hot fusion carried out at warm temperatures”. In the case of Rossi – a preference for a reaction that was controlled to a low temperature, such at 181 C would explain “wet steam” and a few other things as being necessary to see the high COP. Who knows? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is Curt Edstrom's report of his efforts to find a thermal anomaly in Ni-H, notably mentioning Ikegami and liquid lithium. Liquid lithium seems to be a topic of current interest in LENR, due to the major experimental efforts of Ikegami and others over the years – and another aspect of the “Swedish connection” to LENR. http://www.ecat-thenewfire.com/File1.pdf I have the same interpretation of Ikegami’s work with a proton beam as does Edstrom. Ikegami finds a massive 10^11 increase in reaction rate of a fairly low energy beam, achieving breakeven condition; but only so long as the lithium is precisely at the melting point. If the temperature is much in excess of this – the rate of reaction falls by a factor of 10,000:1 and is nowhere near breakeven. That need for maintaining a temperature at the melting point of lithium does not make much sense from a physics perspective, but nevertheless this is one interpretation of several extremely well done experiments. The lesson of this finding applied to the “dogbone genre”, assuming Ikegami is correct – is that this reaction could be adapted IF: 1) LiAl4 is avoided - since the alloy will not release lithium easily. OTOH at its melting point, the same result could take place. 2) Use lithium in a form which will release lithium metal at low temperature (many choices for that including the metal itself) 3) Lithium metal melts at 181 C – so run the reactor at precisely this temperature using temperature feedback from the thermocouple to keep a constant temperature level and sampling many times per second. 4) A proton “beam” (of natural sort) will appear when protons are accelerated from various hydrides - having found a Rydberg “hole” equal or greater than 54.4 eV. 5) Notably iron has two such IP levels - and helium one – and since the ash (end product) is a perfect fit for 54.4 eV – this indicates the possibility of positive feedback which needs to be carefully controlled. The main problem with this suggestion is that the reaction should produce two alpha particles, which accelerate at high speed on beryllium-8 fission, which should cause secondary x-ray radiation as they thermalize, which is not seen. However, if helium is detected at all - in the ash of a low-temp-dogbone, then Ikegami could become the new savior of LENR.
