I have done a ballpark analysis of the "hidden chemical fuel" scenario
for Rossi's one-hour test. I have looked at the water heater
specifications in my house and also a tabletop butane cook stove. I
conclude that chemical fuel cannot be the source of this heat, for a
number of reasons. To summarize:
The device is too small to hold the fuel.
There are no air holes in the device.
Burning the fuel would make too much noise and fumes not to be noticed.
No off-the-shelf commercially available fuel would work
Putting any kind of fuel inside the Rossi device would heat up the fuel
and cause an explosion
Rossi device size. Judging by the size of people's hands in the photos,
I estimate the gadget is a cylinder ~20 cm in diameter ~120 cm long. I
assume the vertical portion is not part of the active device. Anyway,
that's 37,700 cm^3 (38 liters). Most of the inside is clearly filled
with pipes, the metal wall of the device and so on. I figure there is
only about 10 L of space inside to hide something. Internal diameter
(ID) ~18 cm?
There are no air holes in this device. You would have to supply oxygen
as well as fuel. Compressed oxygen takes up a lot of space. Rossi would
have to design a carefully engineered system to deliver the fuel and
oxygen without an explosion. Assume for the sake of argument that Rossi
is a con man, that would mean he is not a genius rocket scientist
capable of developing a new sort of energy dense oxygenated fuel. He
will use off-the-shelf butane canisters and an oxygen tank.
My home water heater is particularly large. Is a 50 gallon gas fired
unit rated at 40,000 BTU. That is BTU per hour, which works out to be
422 MJ delivered at 11.7 kW. Almost the same as the Rossi device. That
heater is loud! You can hear the gas burning through the walls of the
utility closet. The air holes are larger than the flames inside quite
substantial. The Rossi device would have to have very thick walls to
muffle the sound, and I doubt even that would work.
During the last 30 minutes of the 1-hour run, the device produces 6 kWh
(12 kWh/2). There is excess energy during the first 30 minutes too, even
though the input electric power is 1 kW. This is apparent from the
graphs. Let us say there was 3 kWh in the first 30 minutes. That's 9 kWh
total, or 32.4 MJ.
The choice of fuel is limited. Gasoline or kerosene would produce a
strong odor. Compressed gas would be far too large. I think the only
practical choice would be something like butane.
I have an Iwatani stove, similar to this:
http://www.wasserstrom.com/restaurant-supplies-equipment/Product_900459
It is rated 15,000 BTU (BTU/hour) which is 4.4 kW, which I find a little
hard to believe. Comparing it to an electric frying pan I would have
guessed 2 kW. Anyway, "Max duration at full power" is 55 minutes, or
1,650 s. So that's 7.3 MJ per canister. Right?
The stove takes BU-5 canisters:
http://www.iwatani.com/asp/w_product/Product.asp?ProductID=36
A canister holds 227 g of fuel. Butane is listed in various ways, but I
think it is 47 MJ/kg which is about the same as gasoline. See:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/NicoleWeathers.shtml
So 1 canister holds 10.7 MJ. Right? That's more than the manufacturer's
spec. Anyway . . . Let's go with the manufacturer, 12,000 BTU for 55
minutes -- 7.3 MJ. You cannot drain them faster than the maximum burn
rate with the valve fully open. Again, we are assuming that a con-man
cannot engineer a new type of canister with a different kind of valve.
So we need 3 canisters to produce enough power, and 4.4 canisters to
provide enough energy. In practice, a con-man could not figure out a way
to make 0.4 canisters, so that's 5 canisters.
Canister dimensions: 7 cm diameter, 20 cm length, 3 liters. Given the
likely inner diameter you can only fit 2 or 3 of these things in there.
Given the need for an oxygen tank, I would guess 2 at most, laid top to
bottom next to a thin oxygen tank.
It seems very unlikely to me that you could even fit 3 canisters and
burners in there, and 5 is out of the question. Even if you could, as a
practical matter, putting a butane canister or a gasline tank inside a
closed metal cylinder in which 12 kW of heat is released would surely
cause it to explode.
Granted, Rossi did say: "I was terrorized of that test, because should
something go wrong I would have been killed . . ." Hmmm . . .
- Jed
