Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation

[Stephen A. Lawrence]

And BTW if the beast put out a continuous 1 MW, then /it was impossible 
to control the power level via feedback from the output temperature/.  
Any such feedback control would have caused the power output to vary 
down from the nominal 1 MW.

So, there was no feedback control of the power level, _/by definition of 
the terms of the test.

/_And there was no feedback control of the flow rate, _/by testimony of 
Rossi's figures, which show constant flow rate/.

_In short, /there was no possible active matching of power level to flow 
rate.

/The fact that the power produced was exactly sufficient to exactly 
vaporize 100% of the input water was, therefore, coincidence.  (Either 
that, or the steam was /not dry/.)

Am I missing something?  When stated this way, this sounds like a 
no-brainer, even without reference to any of the details of the setup.  
If this thing was supposed to produce dry steam, and its output temp was 
always within a few degrees of boiling, then it had to be a fake.


On 08/24/2016 01:08 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:


On 08/24/2016 12:29 PM, David Roberson wrote:
Stephen you are assuming a design that is far different than Rossi's 
previous devices.  For most of the recent demonstrations Rossi had 
his thermal generation components contained within a large thinned 
mass.  The incoming water essentially fell into a big boxy outer 
structure and came into contact with the inner section at a multitude 
of locations where it extracted heat through the fins.

But the shape really doesn't matter.  It's just thermodynamics. As 
long as it's a flow-through boiler the same conclusions must apply -- 
the water comes in <somewhere>, flows along <some path>, turns to 
steam at <some spacial location>, flows along <some path> as steam, 
and exits the reactor.  Whether it's a big box, a tea-kettle shaped 
vessel, or a collection of pipes or a thin, wide sheet, there still 
must be a continuous flow from the input to the output.

And there will be a line of demarcation between water and steam, with, 
one may expect, higher temperatures on the steam side.

If (flow_rate * heat-of-vaporization  +  flow_rate * 
heat-to-raise-to-boiling) is not /exactly/ matched to the power 
generated, either the effluent will be water (or water mixed with 
steam), or it will be superheated steam, but in either case, as long 
as the power level and flow rate are constant, the output temperature 
would be expected to be fixed, and the "boiler" will contain at least 
some liquid water.


You misunderstood my point about immediate boiling.

Sorry!  I see that now, I think.

I just wanted to express the thought that only a small volume of 
water would remain in liquid form within the unit.  Since it is 
assumed that more heat is generated than needed to boil all of the 
water entering, it becomes apparent that the temperature of the ECAT 
must rise and not remain at the boiling point.  This increase in 
temperature can be detected and _*therefore a thermal loop can 
control it*_.

Yes.  But no such loop has ever been described.  From the beginning 
there has been talk of how that could be done .... but it didn't come 
from Rossi, only from those trying to explain the amazing coincidence 
of the "dry steam" effluent never rising much above boiling.

And AFAIK _*no*_ reason has ever been put forward to explain /why/ 
you'd want to keep the "dry steam" at the boiling point, rather than 
letting it go up to, say, 120 C, which would totally eliminate any 
question of whether it was "really steam" or just slightly pressurized 
water.  If the temp had been 120C back in 2011 we wouldn't be having 
this discussion today. (But to push the temperature that high, the 
Rossi reactors would have had to actually work as claimed.)


Also, the vapor can be super heated by the additional hot surface on 
its way to the outside port.  And, indeed this is exactly the 
scenario that could be used to generate dry steam if properly employed.

Yes.  Exactly.  But it would be very unlikely for it to stay within a 
few degrees of boiling, which is the whole point.

Not once has Rossi demonstrated "dry steam" production with the steam 
temperature sufficiently hotter than boiling to rule out the 
possibility that the "steam" was mostly (by mass) liquid water.


So, in my attempt to understand how the gauges might be reading in 
error I must assume that the liquid is not being boiled off within 
each of the 24 or ? devices, but instead leaves in the liquid form 
which flashes into a liquid, vapor combination.  If the complete 
filling of the ECAT portions by water does not take place then Jed's 
position is undermined pretty much as you are describing.

Sorry, I didn't follow the bit about Jed's position being undermined 
if the devices are not full of water.

To produce wet steam you need droplets of water exiting the device, 
but that doesn't really require that the device be entirely filled 
with water.  Tea kettles are treacherous models for analysing the ecat 
(since they're fill-once-and-boil rather than flow-through) but a tea 
kettle is still informative in this case:  A half full kettle can 
still produce wet steam.  It all depends on the arrangement of the 
heating element and how much contact it has with the steam/water 
mixture after it leaves the surface of the liquid water.

Ultimately, the geometry of the boiler doesn't matter.  The issue is 
/_how_ is the temperature prevented from rising significantly above 
boiling?/  If we're assuming the things actually work as claimed and 
trying to understand them in those terms, then speculation about how 
it /could have been done/ is irrelevant -- how does Rossi claim it was 
done?  AFAIK he ignores the issue and provides no explanation.

And, there is the related and equally important question, _/why/_/is 
the temperature prevented from rising significantly above boiling?/  
One possible answer to this is all too obvious, and unless you can 
think of an alternative, I'll go with, "/It's kept just above boiling 
to obfuscate the question of whether it's actually dry steam or 
not/".  IOW it's kept at boiling to make it easy to fake the results.




Dave



-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen A. Lawrence <sa...@pobox.com>
To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Wed, Aug 24, 2016 11:58 am
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation



On 08/24/2016 11:19 AM, David Roberson wrote:

    That is not entirely true because it requires a perfect balance
    of heat generation and water input flow.  For example, if 1%
    extra liquid water is continually added to the ECAT heating
    chamber it will  eventually overflow and begin to flow out of the
    port as a combination of vapor and liquid water leading to wet
    steam.  This would take place at a constant temperature which
    would make thermal control difficult.

    On the other hand, if 1% less liquid water flows into the chamber
    then eventually all of the coolant will become vaporized
    immediately upon entry.


No, it will not vaporize "immediately upon entry". Assuming the 
design is anything like what I believe earlier ecats were set up 
with, you've got a reactor chamber and a water jacket, not unlike the 
arrangement on an internal combustion engine.  (Or it could be set up 
as an old fashioned steam locomotive boiler, with multiple pipes 
running _through_ the reactor chamber, but it's the same idea either 
way -- the water _flows_ through a heated aqueduct of some sort, from 
one end to the other, growing hotter as it travels; it does /not/ 
just sit in a "chamber" until it boils away.)

It will flow in as water, be heated to boiling as it traverses the 
water jacket (or pipe, if you prefer), vaporize at some point (and 
some /particular location/ in the duct work) so that it initially 
becomes a mixture of steam and water droplets, and then continue to 
be heated, as steam, as it traverses the remainder of the jacket.  
The parts of the chamber being cooled by steam may be hotter than the 
parts where there's liquid water in the jacket but since the reactor 
chamber itself is above boiling anyway, the difference may not be all 
that significant.

*In fact, this is **/exactly/**the scenario which must be taking 
place **/if the effluent is dry steam, as claimed./*  After the water 
hits boiling, in order to be totally dry, the steam must be 
superheated to some extent as it continues to traverse the _heated_ 
conduit.

There's a fixed amount of power coming from the reactor chamber, so 
the effluent temperature should also be fixed -- it won't just rise 
arbitrarily.   It just shouldn't be /exactly at boiling/, which 
implies an exact match between power provided and power consumed by 
vaporizing the water, despite the lack of either active power level 
control or flow rate control.

    It might be possible to adjust the power generation downwards
    under this condition since the chamber would likely begin to rise
    in temperature without adequate coolant.  Here, the temperature
    feedback would be asked to take over control of the process.

    Earlier you made a big point that feedback level control was
    obvious due to having so many fine, controllable, accurate pumps
    in the system.  Do you now believe that level control is not
    being used in the system?  I am not totally convinced that
    feedback water level control is not part of the main plan once
    everything settles down in production.  That control technique
    would go a long way toward ensuring dry steam is always generated.

    Dave



    -----Original Message-----
    From: a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net>
    To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
    Sent: Wed, Aug 24, 2016 8:04 am
    Subject: Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation

    You don't need "active feedback."   The steam escapes the reactor
    shortly after being formed


    On 8/24/2016 12:33 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:



        On 08/24/2016 12:03 AM, David Roberson wrote:

            As I have stated, if the steam is truly dry then plenty
            of power is being supplied to the customer.  If the ERV
            is mistaken that the steam is dry then I.H. is likely
            correct.

            If everyone accepts that the true pressure of the steam
            is atmospheric while the temperature is 102.8 C then it
            is dry.


        Unless there's some active feedback mechanism keeping the
        temperature of the effluent between 100 and 103 C, it's hard
        to believe the effluent is dry steam.  The heat capacity of
        steam is so small compared with the latent heat of
        vaporization one would expect the temperature of (dry) steam
        in the closed system to be driven well above boiling -- not
        just barely over it.

        This has been the problem with Rossi's steam demos since the
        beginning:  There is no feedback mechanism to keep the
        temperature barely above boiling, yet it never goes more than
        a couple degrees above.  Either there's feedback nailing the
        power output to the level needed to /just exactly/ vaporize
        the water (with essentially no heat left over to superheat
        the steam), or there is feedback nailing the water flow rate
        to the be just fast enough to consume all the heat from the
        system in vaporizing the water, or there is a miraculous
        coincidence between the heat produced and the water flow rate.

        We /know/ there's no feedback controlling the flow rate,
        because that was rock steady.

        No mention has ever been made of any feedback mechanism
        fixing the reaction rate to the steam temperature, so short
        of fantasizing about something Rossi never said he did, we
        have no reason to believe such a thing exists.  In fact we
        don't even know that the reaction (if there is a reaction)
        can be controlled with the precision needed to keep the
        output temperature so close to boiling -- and we also have no
        reason to believe anyone would even /want/ to do that.

        So, the only conclusion that makes sense in this situation is
        that the "feedback" keeping the temperature almost exactly at
        boiling is provided by water mixed with the steam, and that
        consequently the steam must be very wet.



            But that is the root of the problem; both parties do not
            agree that this is true. Only one can be right in this
            case.  Also, there is no law of nature that ensures that
            what the ERV states is true.  He may be confused by the
            location of gauges, etc.

            AA, Engineer48 claims that the pumps are all manually set
            and not under automatic control according to his
            picture.  If true, that would eliminate the feedback
            level control that was discussed earlier. It is my
            opinion that some form of automatic level control is
            required in order to produce a stable system that
            prevents liquid filling or dying out of the CATS.  This
            is an important factor that both of the parties should
            address.

            Dave

            -----Original Message-----
            From: a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net>
            To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
            Sent: Tue, Aug 23, 2016 10:59 pm
            Subject: Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation

            Apparently the ERV measured 102.8 C @ atmospheric
            pressure.  That is dry steam.
            That implies the customer used steam at a negative pressure.

            On 8/23/2016 8:50 PM, Bob Cook wrote:


                Dave--

                The steam table indicates a condition of equilibrium
                between the liquid phase and the gaseous phase of
                water. If the conditions are  1 bar at a temperature
                above the 99.9743 there is no liquid phase in
                equilibrium with the steam (gas) phase.  The gas is
                phase is at 102 degrees and is said to be super heated.

                The steam tables tell you nothing about liquid phase
                carry-over in a dynamic flowing system. Normally
                there would be a moisture separator in the system to
                assure no carry-over.

                Bob
                
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                *From:* David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com>
                *Sent:* Monday, August 22, 2016 9:27:19 PM
                *To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com
                *Subject:* Re: [Vo]:Interesting Steam Calculation
                Dave--

                Where did the pressure of 15.75 psi abs come from?  I
                thought the pressure of the 102C dry steam (assumed)
                was 1 atmos.--not 15.75 abs.

                I  think your assumed conditions above 1 atmos. were
                never measured.

                Bob Cook

                Bob, I used a steam table calculator located at
                
http://www.tlv.com/global/TI/calculator/steam-table-pressure.html
                to obtain my data points.

                According to that source, 14.6954 psi abs is 0 bar at
                a temperature of 99.9743 C degrees.
                At 102 C degrees the pressure is shown as 15.7902 psi
                absolute.
                Also, at 15.75 psi abs you should be at 101.928 C.  I
                must have accidentally written the last digit in
                error for some reason.

                Does this answer your first question?

                You are correct about the assumed pressures above 1
                atmosphere not being measured directly.  I admit that
                I rounded off the readings a bit, but the amount of
                error resulting from the values I chose did not
                appear to impact the answers to a significant
                degree.  In one of Rossi's earlier experiments the
                temperature within his ECAT was measured to reach a
                high of about 135 C just as the calculated power
                being measured at the output of his heat exchanger
                reached the maximum.  At the time I concluded that
                this must have occurred as a result of the filling of
                his device by liquid water.

                I chose 130 C for my latest calculations mainly as an
                estimate of the temperature within the ECAT modules.
                The higher pressure (39.2 psi absolute) was the value
                required to keep the liquid water in saturation with
                the vapor.  Rossi is using a feedback system to
                control the heating of his modules and that requires
                him to operate each at a few degrees above the output
                temperature(102 C?) as a minimum. There is no
                guarantee that he regulates them at 130 C as I
                assumed, but that temperature was consistent with
                having a ratio of vapor volume to liquid volume of
                nearly 100 to 1.

                Of course I could have raised the ECAT temperature to
                get a larger ratio of flash vapor to liquid water at
                the output stream. Likewise, the ratio would drop if
                a lower temperature is assumed.   The 130 C appeared
                to be near to his earlier design, and I had to choose
                something.  Do you have a suggestion for a better
                temperature or pressure to assume?

                Dave

                
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