Jones Beene reports that it may be impossible to transfer 16 kW or 130 kW from a 1 L steel cell a flow of water. To test this hypothesis, I looked at two examples of heat transfer, in a tankless water heater, and a nuclear power plant.
The tankless heater is Niagara brand 12 kW electrically fired unit that belongs to a friend of mine. See: http://www.tanklesswaterheater.com/faq.php It produces 5 gallons a minute, which is about one-third the flow rate of the Feb. 10 Rossi machine test. I asked my friend to look inside the water heater. He reports there are two resistance heaters. They are conical, about 1.5" at the top, 2" at the bottom, 6" long. That is ~18.9 cubic inches, or 309 cm^3. The two of them together are 0.6 L. They would easily fit inside the Rossi gadget. They transfer 12 kW to the flowing water reliably for years. The shape and size of the Rossi cell is not known, but assuming it is cylindrical with fairly large surface area, the performance of this water heater indicates it should have no difficulty transferring 16 kW. A large nuclear power plant produces 1 GW electric, which calls for ~3 GW of heat. The reactor core has fuel rods, with uranium on the inside and zirconium on the outside. A fuel rod is 4 m long and 1 cm in diameter, or 0.315 L in volume, with a large surface area. Various sources say that nuclear reactors have anywhere from 65,000 to 80,000 rods in them. Taking 80,000, the volume of the rods is 24,120 L. Divide 3 GW by 24,120 L and you get 119 kW per liter. This is reasonably close to the 130 kW reported for the Rossi cell, although the cell must have less surface area, or it would not fit in the Rossi device. In normal fission reactor operations, pressurized cooling water circulates around these rods very rapidly, and the rods are no danger whatever of melting. There is a large safety margin. Therefore it seems likely to me that you could increase the heat transfer by a large factor without having the metal soften or rupture. The role of the cooling water in a reactor core is critical. This can be seen in the Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents. When you scram the reactor, power falls to roughly 1% of the production level. When you remove the cooling water from the reactor core, the rods soon melt. - Jed
