There certainly is plenty of confusion to go
around here. Were measurements by volume or by
mass? -- the whole Krivit/Levi/Rossi flap.
The meter in question measures a number of
variables, I believe the relevant ones here are
temperature, pressure, and relative humidity. It
does not seem to directly measure "liquid water
per cubic meter," but this is what Galantini told Krivit, as translated:
I repeat that all the measurements I did, during
tens of tests done to measure the amount of not
evaporated water (read liquid water, TN) present
in the steam produced by E-Cat generators,
always was made providing results in % of
mass, since the used device indicates the grams
of water by cubic meter of steam.
I confirm that the measured temperature always
was higher than 100,1°C and that the measured
pression in the chimney always was equal to the ambient pressure.
The instrument used during the tests performed
in the presence of Swedish teachers was as
follows: 176 Text Code 0572 H2 1766 .
The "used device" does have a feature to
interpret and translated what it actually
measures, temperature, pressure, and relative
humidity, into grams per cubic meter. It does
this for air. This is not a measurement of liquid
water, as far as I can tell. Galantini may have
made some calculation, but does not disclose
this, nor his method, nor the readings he took.
The statement does not make or confirm any claim on steam quality.
I'm seeing statements like this:
http://peakoil.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60688&p=1062397
Just re-iterate,
<http://peakoil.com/forums/cold-fusion-merged-t60688-389.html>Dr.
Galantini confirmed today that any condensed
water in the steam was measured as a percentage of MASS, not volume.
Of course, what Galantini actually said was not
that! What I can see is that there are people
reading things the way they want them to be.
Galantini, quite simply, did not say what was
claimed. He said that he provided results as % of
mass, apparently referring to a previous report,
but what was indicated by the meter was grams per
unit volume. The problem is grams of *what* per
unit volume? Is the meter measuring "condensed
water," or is it measuring *water vapor,* as the meter seems designed to do?
Galantini, if he provided measurements as
percentage of mass, did so by making a
calculation, so it is then very proper to ask how
the meter readings were converted to calculations
of mass ratio, since the meter does not read in
mass ratio, it reads in grams (grams of what?) per unit volume.
Given the normal applications of this meter, the
reading in grams per unit volume would be
expected to be grams of water -- as vapor -- per
cubic meter of air. Measuring liquid water content is not nearly as easy.
Looking back, I see this in Levi's January 21 report:
http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3076881.ece/BINARY/Levis+and+Bianchinis+rapport+%28pdf%29
The main origin of possible errors in [Test1]
measure was that the steam was not
checked to be completely dry. During [Test2 ] this measure was done by Dr.
Galantini a senior chemist who has used an air quality monitor instrument
HD37AB1347 from Delta Ohm with a HP474AC probe .
Notice: no statement of results from Galantini.
Notice that Galantini is presented as a "senior
chemist." I would not expect a chemist to
necessarily be expert on the issues involved here. Not the same field at all.
I've been looking and have not been able to find
actual data from Galantini. Given all this flap, isn't that interesting?
We have better information from Kullander and Essen, from the March 29 test.
http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3144960.ece/BINARY/Download+the+report+by+Kullander+and+Ess
As an aside, this statement is in that report:
If no additional heat had been generated
internally, the temperature would not exceed the
60 °C recorded at 10:36. Instead the temperature
increases faster after 10:36, as can be seen as
a kink occurring at 60 °C in the temperature-time relation.
This is likely an error. There is no sign that,
before 60 degrees was reached, of an asymptotic
approach to that temperature. The basis for
making this statement is not given, perhaps
Kullander and Essen will clarify at some time, I
think this was just a slip. What would have been
true is that the rate of change of temperature
would not have increased beyond the rate existing
before that point. The temperature, without
excess power, would have still increased to some
level, unknown and apparently not tested. (It
would be easy to test, just don't add the hydrogen....)
Indeed, a lot of fuss would have been avoided by
running two identical E-Cats in parallel, one
with and one without hydrogen, and with identical input power.
Between 11:00 and 12:00 oclock, control
measurements were done on how much water that
had not evaporated. The system to measure the
non-evaporated water was a certified Testo
System, Testo 650, with a probe guaranteed to
resist up to 550°C. The measurements showed that
at 11:15 1.4% of the water was non-vaporized, at
11:30 1.3% and at 11:45 1.2% of the water was
non-vaporized. The energy produced inside the
device is calculated to be (1.000-0.013)(16:30-10:45)4.39 =25 kWh.
The Testo 650 meter, again, does not measure
"non-evaporated water" It measures, like the
device used by Galantini, humidity. The Testo 650
manual shows that the Testo unit will display
"absolute humidity" in g/m^3 or g/kg. But what it
is measuring is humidity. I do not see how this,
absent quite a bit of other information, would be
used to determine the percentages Kullander and
Essen report. However, what they do report is 1.2
to 1.4 "percent of the water," which is used in a
calculation that refers to the percentage of
water, applying this to a result which was
presuming that all the water were vaporized,
based on the weight of water input. So this is
equivalent to a mass fraction, i.e., mass of
unvaporized water per mass of steam.
The figure 4.39 is an apparent error, they came up with 4.69 kW.
There is a measurement mode for the Testo 650
which measures what is called "water activity"
(aw). I doubt this was used, it requires
accessories which are not described. I have no
idea how Essen and Kullander went from what the
meter presented to the figures of 1.2 to 1.4%.
Given that the humidity measurements are
unreliable above 98% humidity, and the humidity
in the chimney will be 100%, they might just be
looking at instrument error. I/m not sure what
probe they were using, but I don't see any probes
with an accuracy better than 2%, and that's for RH up to 98%.
Having no experience with this kind of meter, I'm
flopping around in the dark, and nobody seems to be turning on the lights.
Temperature accuracy appears to be +/- 0.5 C. by
the way, Rossi's instrumentation is probably more accurate.
However, there is this statement in the Kullander and Essen report:
The 100 °C temperature is reached at 10:42 and
at about 10:45 all the water is completely
vaporized found by visual checks of the outlet
tube and the valve letting out steam from the chimney.
Geez, wishes and horses. They are giving us their
conclusions, but at least, here, they tell us
what they looked at. They don't tell us what they
actually saw, but presumably they saw live steam.
There are people who would know how to judge
that, and I'd expect this from Essen and
Kullander. So they saw some live steam,
particularly of interest at the chimney valve.
What they saw at the end of the tube they don't say.
The whole thing about using RH meters to measure
steam quality leads me to some serious doubts
about something. I'm not sure what it is! I know
that very smart people, experts, can make stupid
mistakes. The true experts, when they realize
they've made a mistake, simply acknowledge it and move on.
Did these people make a mistake with the RH
meters? It looks like it, but I've seen no
defense from them! Galantini basically said
nothing, and Krivit didn't ask Kullander the
obvious questions, he only asked about his stupid
mass/volume issue, which is a non-issue. The
question is how steam quality was determined,
what the numbers in the report mean and how they
were obtained, and they obviously presented mass
ratio, the calculation would make no sense otherwise.
I just love it that a "chemist" is presented as
an unchallengeable expert on measuring steam
quality. Really? I'd think you'd want an engineer
who does that kind of design, a professional in
the field of, say, boiler technology. It's like
our dear friend Martin Fleischmann, who made an
(indirect) neutron measurement without being
familiar with the vagaries of such. People make
mistakes, and people doing something for the
first time *very often* make mistakes. We have
seen no evidence about the long-term expertise of
these people with regard to steam quality....
We'd be much happier with demonstrations that
rely on very simple principles! Many, including
Jed Rothwell, have suggested demonstrations that
would have been very easy to do, but Rossi
refused. And what I know is to avoid guessing
what things like that mean. Very often, what we
think they mean is heavily influenced by what we expect.
It is what it is, and, right now, what *is* for
me is that I can't make sense of these reports,
not on the issue of steam quality, and because
Essen and Kullen don't tell us anything to rule
out the possibility of cooling water running
directly out that hose (live steam coming out of
the chimney valve doesn't negate that, unless you
shut a valve leading to the hose), I'm stuck.
Really want to do this safely and convincingly?
Make that tee that I've described, but also put
an overpressure valve in it, like is found on
boilers. So if you accidentally shut both valves,
you don't have flying shrapnel from an exploding
E-Cat, just some embarassing steam reminding you
what a stupid thing you just did, and, hopefully,
minor burns at most. (The temperature would rise
rapidly, as one clue to the dodoheads standing around.)
To repeat the suggestion: a tee is placed at the
top of the chimney as the only outlet, or in the
only outlet. (If there is already an overpressure
valve at the top of the chimney, great, then the
tee is placed between the hose and the E-cat hose
fitting, and the side branch of the tee faces
straight up -- or toward some side where people
don't stand.... There is a valve, then, between
the tee and the hose, and a valve in the side
branch. Normal operation, exhaust through the
hose, and, in this configuration, that does down
the drain. Steam quality test operation, the side
valve is opened, the hose valve is shut (in that
order!) and the steam can be observed directly.
Live steam will exit from the valve, invisibly,
and will become visible within a certain distance
from the valve opening, as contact with the air
cools it. This test could be done periodically during operation.
Now, just an idea. Live steam is transparent, wet
steam will diffuse light, to some degree. It
should be possible to make some device of glass
-- this isn't high pressure -- where the steam
passing through a glass tube is in a path of
light that is sensed. Wetness of the steam will
reduce the light detected. If the steam is
completely clear, no reduction over air, I'd
expect it's dry. At the same time, the presence
of liquid water (gross liquid water) can be ruled
out, it would be seen. A reduction of light that
is invisible to the eye can be detected electronically, easily.
