On Jan 19, 2011, at 7:38 AM, Mark Iverson wrote:
Hi Fran:
Yes, agreed... The comment about steam was only half serious!
The thought there was that the steam was 'exhaust' and dilution of
the 'fuel' with exhaust would
decrease efficiency. But that was thinking of this thing like an
internal combustion engine...
However, no one has commented at all about the main point of my
posting. There was all this concern
and angst about a runaway reaction and, oh my, how dangerous this
is, and its going to be soooooo
difficult to make a 'safe' reactor. It has been said, by Rossi
himself, that the reaction stops very
quickly (within seconds, or a few tens of seconds?) after you stop
the hydrogen flow...
-Mark
I made some comments regarding reaction control, via thermal cycling
here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg41599.html
I suspect it is not flow but pressure drop, the loss of hydrogen
partial pressure, that is the important result from "turning off the
hydrogen".
Confirmation of this concept occurs in the form of a gamma "flash"
that occurs when the hydrogen is shut off. This flash is what is
expected by the deflation fusion model. As the hydrogen concentration
quickly drops, due to the small nano-powder grain size, the tunneling
rate momentarily jumps, as does the reaction rate. If the grain size
were larger, this degassing process would last longer, and the
momentary increase in nuclear activity would be called "heat after
death". The reaction is quickly shut down because in a nano-powder
the effect of the loss of hydrogen concentration, quickly overwhelms
the momentarily increased tunneling rate. This quick shut down might
not happen in the case where melting of the powder occurs, and longer
diffusion paths exist. This is of course speculation, as is almost
all talk about the Rossi device, given the little we know about it.
Even Rossi says he doesn't understand why it works. Everyone is
forced into speculating when talking about issues like this.
Replacing the hydrogen flow with another gas flow, e.g. carbon
dioxide, has the effect of cutting the hydrogen partial pressure
while simultaneously sustaining a cooling flow.
While engineering these kinds of simple parameters, gas pressure and
temperature, are readily engineered, the longer term effects of other
parameters, such as changing lattice structure, magnetic and electric
fields, grain size stability, and transmutation product accumulation,
may present as yet unknown control risks.
Those are my speculations. 8^)
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
