Jed,
What you wrote is perfectly clear. But there are some things missing
that cloud the picture.
1. It seems the pressure drop across the feed pipe is not available.
Eg. it could have been negative at the receiving end with the steam
condensing.
2. I presume that the water level in the reactors was controlled such
that water could not overflow into the output steam line. Granted the
steam may have been wet, but it was probably steam.
3. Too much is made of the minimum rating of the flow meter. IF it was
the model you quote it looks like a poor choice. Even if it were, there
is no reason to think it would read high - it would probably read low at
some lower flow rate.
On 8/8/2016 9:51 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I wrote:
Look at Exhibit 5, and also look at what Rossi told Lewan. The
temperature is just over 100°C and the flow rate is 36,000 kg per
day. The pressure is 0 bar. It is the same every day, including
days when the reactor was shut down, according to Exhibit 5.
If you assume there was actually some pressure, then there was
only hot water, not steam, where the temperature went from 60°C to
100°C. Assume there was 20 kW of input power. That's 20,000 J/s =
4,780 cal. . . .
Let me revise this using the numbers from Exhibit 5. Exhibit 5 shows
the water reservoir was 68.7°C and the fluid was 102.8°C, a
temperature difference of 34.1°C.
As described in Exhibit 5, the pressure of 0.0 bar is unlikely because
it would mean the reactor room is in a vacuum. "Given the foregoing,
this would require that the pressure on the JMP side of the building
was significantly below atmospheric (vacuum) and that the steam would
flow at extraordinary velocity."
Let me assume the pressure was a little higher than 1 atm. That means
the fluid was pressurized and it was probably not steam. It was
probably hot water. Assume it was hot water and the temperature
increased by 34.1°C. Input power was 20,000 J/s = 4,780 cal. Divide by
34.1°C gives a flow rate of 140 g/s. That's 8.41 kg/minute or 12,111
kg/day. The flow meter indicated 36,000 kg/day, so I estimate it was
wrong by a factor of ~3.
As I said, that is not a surprising error, given that the pipe was
half full and it was the wrong kind of flow meter.
- Jed
