Yesterday I wrote that it can be surprisingly difficult to evaluate the
performance of a large machine. That probably sounds odd. Let me explain
a bit, while I try to anticipate some of the honest skeptical objections
that might be raised about a 1 MW demonstration. Rossi is sometimes open
to suggestions and if we can come up with ways to avoid these problems
perhaps he will make adjustments.
Let's look at what we know about the proposed demonstration, and think
about how to measure the effect.
THE 1 MW DEMO
Rossi said that the 1 MW unit will be used to generate hot water. Not to
generate steam, not to be used as an electric generator. (This seems
like a wise goal to me, because the conditions needed to generate steam
or electricity are more extreme.) Assume the ratio of control
electronics power to output is the same as the small device, 1:200, the
control electronics will take about 5 kW.
Okay, let us assume the target temperature is 40°C. Max power is 1 MW =
238,000 calories/second so the flow rate will be 5952 ml/s = 6 L per
second (95 gallons per minute). That is not as large of a flow rate as I
thought. A 100 gpm pump costs $642 and takes only 0.5 HP (372 W --
really?!). That seems kind of low. Fire pumps of this capacity are rated
at 10 HP.
A large pump used in a swimming pool is about 75 gpm. You have probably
felt the surge of water from one of these.
TEST PROCEDURE
To test the 15 kW machine, you can buy all equipment you need at Home
Depot and Radio Shack for less than $100. You need a thermistor, a Kill
A Watt efficiency monitor, a large bucket marked in liters, and a
stopwatch (nowadays a virtual stopwatch on a computer). Install the Kill
A Watt between the wall outlet and the control electronics box, to
circumvent skeptical doubts about waveforms. This equipment will give
you a reliable answer to within 10%, which is enough to be certain that
80 W are going in and 15,000 W coming out.
To test a 1 MW machine, you need thousands of dollars worth of
specialized equipment, starting with a large AC wattmeter (power
analyzer), which costs anywhere from $800 to $15,000. The point is, a
professor or outside observer would not have this sort of thing handy.
Someone like a consulting engineer would. You also need specialized
flowmeters and temperature probes. The testbed at Hydrodynamics cost
tens of thousands of dollars as I recall, and it took months to build.
It had to measure mechanical torque as well as electric power, which
added to the cost. The point is, this is not something you can throw
together with a few universally available parts. You might be forced to
depend upon Rossi himself to provide the instruments and set them up
before the demonstration. This would compromise the results.
It is challenging to install a temperature sensor into such a strong
flow of water. An old-fashioned dial thermometer is probably a good
choice. These things are inaccurate. You could take samples of tap water
input and bucketfuls of the output to measure the temperature independently.
You probably want an IR sensor and some other stuff to do sanity-check
tests.
I would recommend a great deal of nuclear safety equipment; Geiger
counters and the like. Badges to measure radiation exposure. Rossi says
there is no radiation but Celani says he measured it. I would not bet my
life that Rossi is right.
I am sure there would be other challenges I have not thought of. Flow
calorimetry on this scale is quite different from anything in the
laboratory. As I mentioned, measuring industrial processes is not only
difficult, it is surprisingly inaccurate by the standards of the
laboratory. There are good reasons why people do experiments on the
level of 1 to 10 W. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJbutterside.pdf
REASONABLE SKEPTICAL OBJECTIONS
As noted, if Rossi supplies the instruments even a sympathetic observer
would have doubts. This would not be an independent test in any sense.
This is a large machine. It would probably have to be bolted to the
floor. It would be dangerous to poke around inside it, even if
everything is turned off.
I believe that the control electronics are critical to the performance
of this machine. It would be dangerous to allow these electronics to
turn off completely in the event of a power failure, so I think the
control electronics will require a large battery backup. A power failure
might also disable the flow of water if they use a pump instead of tap
pressure. the point is you will have a lot more equipment and many more
wires which a suspicious person might reasonably suspect is actually
supplying power to the machine. you would have to carefully sort out
what is what, and what where goes where. It is harder to determine the
layout and functionality of the components than with the small 15 kW
machine. I think it would take a few days, and I would want a mechanical
engineer to do the job. I would not trust a professor -- or myself.
Any technically knowledgeable person can look at a large machine and
figure out what the main components do and what the approximate capacity
is. At a hangar across from my office they disassemble and repair jet
aircraft engines. You see electric motors, pumps, turbine blades and all
kinds of stuff there. It is pretty clear how it fits together, what the
parts do, and what the test equipment is for. It is like looking at one
of these illustrated "How It Works" books. That's fine as far as it
goes, but you don't want to rely upon the level of knowledge I might
bring to a hanger to evaluate something as important as a 1 MW Rossi
device. I think you need an engineering professional. Someone like Ed
Storms could do it, naturally, but I think an engineer who evaluates
this sort of equipment for a living would be a better choice. You sure
as heck would not want to rely on Rossi's own evaluation.
Look at the photo of the Hydrodynamics Large Flow Reactor to get a sense
of what I mean:
http://hydrodynamics.com/products/large-flow-reactors/
I'm not saying the 1 MW reactor will be exactly like this, but it will
be a machine roughly on this scale.
This is a 1,500 gpm unit, a lot bigger than the Rossi 1 MW reactor,
according to my estimate. The point is you see it is sitting on a large
concrete slab, and it is not something you can walk up to and start
poking around inside. You cannot put it on a slab of wood and raise it
up so you can see underneath it, the way Levi did with the 15 kW
reactor. There are plenty of places to hide a large wire. Although I
suppose you could check the building itself, to see if a megawatt power
line is coming into it. It isn't as if Rossi can bring in backhoes and
hide an underground 1 MW feed. the next time you are at a shopping mall
go in through the back entrance and have a look at the power supplies --
the transformers in the back of the building. I believe that is roughly
0.5 to 1 MW in a large shopping mall. That is not something you can
hide. I cannot find an image on the web, but I think everyone here knows
what I mean.
During an actual test I would expect to see a flow of water so large it
would be difficult to guess at the size and difficult to measure. I
would expect a great deal of noise and commotion from a hot and
dangerous machine. You have to stand well back. As a practical matter,
by the nature of this kind of experience, it is harder to judge what is
going on than with a laboratory-bench scale device. You are largely
dependent upon the instruments to tell you what is happening. You cannot
tell the difference between 1 MW and 0.5 MW of heat just by looking. At
least, I can't, although I expect a consulting engineer could. Based on
my experience as Hydrodynamics, I predict that even though the machine
will be large, it will not be more persuasive or easy to grasp than a
smaller machine.
Ironically, the smaller machine is probably better suited to the task of
convincing people the effect is real. It also seems big enough to meet
to convince any sensible person that the machine can be used for
industrial applications, automobile engines, generators and so on. I do
not think a 1 MW scale up demonstrates these capabilities better than
the small machine does already, especially when the 1 MW device consists
of 100 smaller ones. To summarize, I cannot think of any reason to make
this, or any purpose that cannot be better served by making 3 or 4 new
small machines. Perhaps Rossi knows something I do not know, or his
financial supporters have asked him to make this 1 MW machine for some
reason I am unaware of.
- Jed
