On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Horace Heffner <hheff...@mtaonline.net>wrote: > > It is notable that the power input varies depending on the controller > actions, that if the power input (plus any nuclear output heat if any) > should become less than that required to convert all the input water to > steam then the liquid excess will eventually simply overflow, i.e. be pumped > out into the hose and down the drain. >
I find this description (like Jed's and others') odd, with the term "overflow". The system starts with liquid water flowing through it, past the reactor, and probably never reaches the point you use as a starting point where all the water is converted to steam. So when the bp is reached, when the input power is 600W, some of the water begins to change phase. That of course increases the volume, and pushes the liquid ahead of it out. In that vertical chimney, there's going to be all sorts of turbulence that will likely produce a sputtering at first, but then as the power increases, a mist that mixes with the steam and proceeds down the hose. After that, as the power increases further, more of the water changes phase to absorb the additional heat, but the output will still be a mixture of steam and mist at the boiling point. The fraction of dry steam will increase as the power increases. If it were ever to reach 5 kW (or so), then as the water passes the reactor, it is all converted to steam. That transition from 600W to 5 kW would have to correspond to an increase in the temperature difference between the reactor and the water by the same factor of 8 (in this case). That would take time, which can be estimated by the time it takes to go from zero power transfer to 600W, and corresponds to hours. Yet Rossi and his believers assume that at the moment the bp is reached, or very soon thereafter, there is a magical transition from 600W transfer to 5 kW transfer. It makes no sense. To come back to your scenario, if the power is then reduced a little, some of the water entering the ecat will not change phase but will be rapidly mixed with the fast moving steam to form a mist again. I don't see this as an overflow. Any liquid filling the hose will be blown apart by the steam forming behind it. > Note that the pump rate is small, on the order of a few cc per second, so it can take a while to fill up a hose held upright into the air, even if the device itself is full of water - which probably can not happen due to percolator type effects. Right, except I don't find the comparison to hot beverage makers very useful because this system has a clear inout and output, and a pump that keeps the flow rate constant. Maybe an espresso maker might be better, but I'd rather just think about the actual device itself.
