On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]> wrote:
Cude>> 1. First and foremost, the device must be completely and obviously standalone. So, disconnect the hydrogen bottle, and the mains power input. >> - The hydrogen bottle should be easy Lomax> Yes. This one is easy. Not so the electricity. As Joshua notes, it could be done. But this is the problem, and it's an engineering and economic problem. To design and build and test the demonstration device would take months, perhaps many months. Many months is nothing in the scheme of things. CF has been pursued for 22 years. > Engineering isn't free. But it's chicken feed compared to the payoff if it's real. > So what's the value in this? If Rossi doesn't need it to accomplish selling the 1 MW plant to Defkalion, it's a fish bicycle. The sale to Defkalion is pocket change compared to the offers he would get if he could demonstrate a device like I described. There is great value in this. Of course, if he failed, he'd lose the Defkalion deal, which is why he doesn't do it. > You want to build this, you pay for it. I don't believe it's possible, so why would I pay for it. People who believe the effect is real should pay to prove it. Anyway, I was asked what would convince me, and I answered. > There is *nothing* in this for him. Nothing but fame, glory, and limitless wealth. > There could be something in it, if for some reason Defkalion falls through. If he needs to raise more capital, then he might need such a bulletproof demonstration. However, assuming that he's not a fraud, he has no reason to do this at this time, and it would actually harm his plans. Only failure would harm his plans. That's what he is afraid of. > One more point: >> Rossi claims the thing has run without power, but that it's dangerous, although he doesn't explain why. The speculation is that an input control is needed to prevent some sort of runaway condition, but it seems counter-intuitive to use additional heat input to prevent runaway. > That depends on how the device is operating. Let's assume that the only control variable is the temperature of the reaction chamber. There are two controls on that chamber, heating by resistor(s) and cooling by water and boiling water. Right. So, use the cooling water. >> In particular, it is implausible that cutting the power by 10% or less would stop a runaway condition, when the variation in claimed output levels is far greater than 10%. > This is merely an idea of what Rossi might be doing. The device, if water is present in the cooling jacket, and with no power, will cool below the temperature at which the heat effect appears. Thus turning off the power will turn off the reaction. The power raises the temperature to the point where the heat effect starts up and becomes reasonably strong, but only to that point. Water will still quench it. > What has been done in designing the E-Cat is to engineer the reaction chamber so that it heats and cools in this way. If the operating temperature is 450 C, then the thermal resistance must be such as to allow this heat, only if there is supplemental heat from electrical heating. Sure but if cutting the input power drops the power by 10% and kills the reaction, then reducing the cooling by 10% would allow the reaction to sustain itself. > Still, the heat might vary, and how this thing is engineered could get quite tricky, but, yes, it's possible that heat could be controlled by heat, as long as you understand that this is extra heat added to keep the temperature to a value above what the reaction itself would sustain, if there is no extra heat. I understand that heat can be used to sustain the reaction, and be designed to just keep it going. My problem was with the use of extra heat to prevent runaway. If the supplemental heat is 10% of the total, and the reactor begins to produce 10% more heat, then shutting off the input will not stop the reaction. Then if a runaway condition starts, how does the input heat stop it? And from the 18 hour experiment, evidently much more than a 10% increase is possible. > There is a bottom line here: wait for Rossi's E-Cats to appear on sale, look at the performance specifications and costs, and *then* make a decision about this. Sure. If that ever happens. But I predict it won't. There will be delays, maybe some explosions, and he'll need more investment. There may be some claimed sales or contracts, a MW reactor sold to a trusted customer, and great claims, but no devices will be generally available, and no true independent testing. Rossi will milk this as long as investors are available. Mills has shown it can be done for decades without ever actually generating power. > Or, if he gets his full patent protection, try independent replication. If the E-Cats work, even most of the time, this is real, I assume, unless the specifications have evaporated to practically nothing. I think he's only guaranteeing 6 to 1. Given the high initial numbers, what's going on? Good question. The 6-fold happens to be the roughly difference between heating water to boiling, and boiling it to vapour. A COP of 6 also nicely sidesteps the embarrassing question of why he doesn't supply the input with the output. For a 100C output temperature, the Carnot efficiency of a heat engine is only 20% or so. In practice, the efficiency would be below 1/6, so he has an excuse for the input power. With a COP of 30, as claimed in January, there should be no reason he couldn't close the loop. The problem with a COP of 6 is that it's only a little better than a ground source heat pump, which for hot water and space heating at 45C, commercial units can approach a COP of 5. No one ever suggests heat pumps will revolutionize energy because they can't in principle close the loop. Until Rossi's device can, it's just a slightly improved heat pump.
