You are using the wrong criteria, as I understand the situation. The 'volume' of the heater is relatively unimportant compared to the surface area exposed to water flow, the time of exposure and the metal transferring the heat. With a tubular reactor as described in the Rossi patent, there is not enough surface area to provide heat transfer through stainless steel to a straight-thru flow of cold water to transfer the level of heat claimed. If it were copper, it would barely work.
I have not yet seen the report, and have only had the summary read over the telephone, and cannot vouch for the accuracy. Hopefully, Levi will address the issue himself. The only reason I was contacted at all probably relates to past posts saying that the reactor is probably copper (bronze, brass etc). But I had already given up that possibility. Resistance heaters immersed in a small tank of water do not develop a limitation via a "bubble sheath" if there is adequate heat transfer area. The wire used in resistance heaters provides lots of area, compared to a tube. Therefore the hot water heater is not a comparable situation. Cold water going around a hot reactor without back pressure immediately develops flash steam, and a sheath of bubbles, severely limiting heat transfer. If the reactor had fins, this transfer rate could be enhanced - but from the known weight of the unit, the calculated mass of the reactor (deducting the lead shield etc) and the minimum thickness of the SS needed to maintain the maximum pressure, this design can have no fins, and only a tube is possible and even then Rossi is cutting it close for safety if he is really using ~25 bar. The 130 kW is physically impossible. The 16 kW is unlikely with stainless, unless there is provided some way to increase the surface area for heat transfer by a large factor; such as if the estimated weight of the unit had NOT included the lead shielding. The caveat is that if the water was not straight through, but instead there was provided an additional winding of copper tubing, then it would be possible to get over 10 kW out, but the images of the small units do not provide sufficient room for a wrapped of tubing, and Rossi himself has indicated a straight-thru operation. Here is an image of Mills holding a stainless reactor, with the copper tubing wrapped in the correct way to transfer heat. Contrast this to the small size of the Rossi reactor having straight-thru operation and you can see the problem. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://spectrum.ieee.org/images/jan09/im ages/lblack01.jpg&imgrefurl=http://spectrum.ieee.org/jan09/7127&usg=__qnWC-f BTokr3qo4pVQfn_GEUw0g=&h=433&w=300&sz=37&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=UlBliveB dIG12M:&tbnh=143&tbnw=124&ei=X3SsTZ7gKKjmiALA3PiXDw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblack light%2Bpower%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1337%26bih%3D773%26tbm%3Disch0%2C34 2&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=722&vpy=219&dur=4572&hovh=270&hovw=187&tx=46&ty=29 1&oei=X3SsTZ7gKKjmiALA3PiXDw&page=1&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:21,s:0&biw=1337&bih =773 It is just one more credibility problem for skeptics to swallow - but this one may be larger than any other seen so far. Not that it matters much, since the megawatt demo will make-or-break everything. I am hoping that prior to that, Levi will take the criticisms to heart, and provide better calorimetry. But to be honest - this is a selfish desire and it could only HARM Rossi, not help him, since it would draw in more needed funding and more scientists trying to replicate. Jones From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 9:50 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Vo]:Heat transfer in a water heater and nuclear plant 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
