At 04:47 AM 7/5/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
BASIC CONCLUSION: None of the plausible
assumptions are consistent with the claim for excess energy being wrong.
These conclusions are an indication of what
passes for evidence for cold fusion advocates.
And are consistent (but much more obviously so)
with the sort of definite conclusions drawn
about other CF experiments, which are explicitly
considered inconclusive (at best) by mainstream science.
Joshua Cude is using this as might be expected.
He's right, "much more obviously so," i.e., there
is some over-optimistic analysis being presented.
However, I've seen no "explicit" analysis by
"mainstream science" considering "inconclusive,"
say, Dr. Storms' paper "Status of cold fusion
(2010)", in Naturwissenschaften, which, last time
I looked, was a "mainstream" peer-reviewed
publication, not given to wild claims.
The "inconclusive" epithet is from roughly twenty
years ago, and we can see this crumbling by the
time of the 2004 U.S. DoE review, where "excess
heat" evidence was considered "conclusive" by
half the panel, and it's clear that the rest of
the panel was rejecting the heat on the basis of
lack of convincing *theory*. Obviously, as to
"convincing theory," we aren't there, neither
with the E-Cat nor with other cold fusion claims.
But heat/helium is *damn convincing.* (and this
has nothing to do with Rossi's Ni-H situation, we
don't expect that helium is being produced,
though, to my knowledge, nobody has checked.)
Cude has long believed that cold fusion is bogus,
and that's a belief, not a fact.
I can agree with Cude on specifics about, say,
relative humidity meters. He is, however, using this to push his own agenda.
Oddly, here, Jed Rothwell and many others
consider the public demonstrations of the E-Cat
are inconclusive, but for other reasons think
that the heat is real. Sure. Maybe. But we can't
tell from the public data, and this isn't how science is done.
Rossi is news, rumor, hype, and secrecy, and it
looks like deliberate mystery is part of the show.
Given sketchy reports based on the incomplete
examination allowed, some of us are trying to
stretch these reports into what they are not.
Kullander and Essen's report hasn't passed peer
review, nor even editing, and it contains some obvious shortcomings.
At the end of the horizontal sectionthere is an
auxiliary electric heater to initialize the
burning and also to act as a safety if theheat
evolution should get out of control.
It's obvious that if the "heat evolution should
get out of control," the heater cannot "act as a
safety." Rather, the device operates in a region
where supplemental heat is required to maintain
operating temperature. So the description of
function is incorrect, and this misinterpretation
has been repeated by skeptics, pointing out that
reducing heat by adding heat is preposterous.
(But controlling heat by taking the reactor into
a marginal region is not preposterous. Defkalion
is apparently using a superior technique, per
their claims, of control through hydrogen pressure in the reactor.
To heat up the adjusted water flow of 6.47
kg/hour from 18 °C to vapor will require
7256.47=4.69 kWh/hour. The power required for
heating and vaporization is thus 4.69 kW.
It requires this power generation as an average
over the hour. This is on the assumption of complete vaporization.
The inlet water temperature was 17.3 °C and
increased slightly to 17.6 °C duringthis initial
running. The outlet water temperature increased
from 20 °C at 10:27 to 60 °C at 10:36. This
means a temperature increase by 40 °C in 9
minutes which is essentially due to the electric heater.
Thus we have an indication that the electric
heater will raise the water temperature 40
degrees C in 9 minutes. Is the cooling water
being pumped in during this period? Yes.
The temperatures of the inlet water and the
outlet water were monitored and recorded every 2 seconds.
So the condition is that water is flowing
*through* the E-cat, and we have a 40 degree rise
in 9 minutes, "essentially due to the electric heater."
However, Kullander and Essen go on to state:
If no additional heat had been generated
internally, the temperature would not exceed the 60 °C recorded at 10:36.
No basis for this statement is given. However,
let's look at an apparent source. What is the
temperature rise that 300 w heating power will
produce in a 6.47 kg/hour water flow? I come up
with 40 degrees. So the statement is based on an
assumption that the flow rate and input power are correct.
The flow rate was determined by filling a carafe,
perhaps by disconnecting the input hose from the
E-Cat and directing it into the carafe. But the
actual flow into the E-Cat could be less, if
there is restriction, the exact flow in could
depend on pump specifications regarding back
pressure, if there is back pressure. If they
instead measured flow out of the outlet hose,
this would establish actual flow, for the period
prior to boiling. It's not stated where the water sample was obtained.
There is also no continuous monitoring of water
flow. It's assumed to be constant, from a single measurement.
Is the experimental data consistent with the
assumption about input power and a 40 degree C. rise?
No, not quite, unless there is already extra heat
before the 40 degree rise point. My reason for
asserting this is that there is thermal inertia,
between the heater and the coolant water,
obviously (or the water would have
instantaneously risen in temperature from 20
degrees to 60 degrees, with the application of
300 watts input power). The temperature would, if
limited to a 40 degree rise, slow exponentially
to approach a 40 degree rise. Examining the plot
of temperature, I can see that there is some
slowing of rise as the temperature approaches 60
degrees, but it looks like the temperature would,
if not for a new source of heat, still continue
to rise some level above 60 degrees. I don't find
this clear. It does look like, however, the
temperature would not reach boiling if not for
extra heat, again on the assumption of constant flow at 6.47 kg/hour.
The procedure employed by Kullander and Essen
does not guarantee constant flow rate, nor does
it measure actual water consumption. (Gravity
feed would have complete answered this and other
questions, and since increased flow rate was used
to shut down the reactor, later, there could have
been alternate feed. The demonstration could have
been improved and made definitive in many ways,
but Kullander and Essen were dealing with at
setup provided by Rossi and under his control,
and not merely "control" to the extent of
preventing examination of the reactor itself, but
also of the measurement setups.
The time taken to bring the water from 60 to
97.5 °C is 4 minutes. 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.
The plot of temperature shows a kink at 60
degrees C., the rate of rise of temperature
suddenly increases. At this point, continuous
monitoriing of output water flow would have
verified the amount of water being heated, but
that was not verified, the "visual check" was later, after boiling initiated.
Roughly, if 300 watts produces a 40 degree rise
in 9 minutes, and then a 37.5 degree rise in 4
minutes would indicate total power of 633 watts, or excess power of 333 w.
There is little sign of any additional increase
in power as the temperature approaches boiling.
Yet later, as heating continues until all water
is presumably being vaporized, a period of about
three minutes, the apparent heating power must
now be 4.38 kW. this must begin some time during
the boiling phase, as, presumably, reactor
temperature continues to increase. We are not
shown reactor temperature, though it is almost
certainly being monitored by Rossi's controller.
That extra power would be shown in reactor
temperature as a very rapid rate of temperature increase.
How this high rate of temperature increase is
controlled to be exactly that which will vaporize
a fixed flow of water, neither allowing excess
flow nor allowing reduction of water level in the
E-Cat cooling chamber, is mysterious. My
conclusion is that prudent engineering, if inflow
rate is to be constant, would set the flow rate a
little high, producing overflow. Rossi is
prudent, i.e., he doesn't want this thing to blow up.
Kullander and Essen assume complete vaporization
from a check of the outlet hose. However, we do
know that under steady state conditions, there
will be condensation in the outlet hose, if
nothing else. How this condensation is
distinguished from actual water overflow (the
initial condition!) is not stated. Did they pull
the hose out of the wall without dumping water?
(Rossi is shown dumping water from the hose into
the drain, by raising the central section of the
hose, well above the E-Cat level, in the Krivit
video) Almost certainly they observed water if
they pulled the hose without dumping it first.
They don't state anything about this explicitly.
They imply there is none, which is highly unlikely.
The problem would be, then, distinguishing this
condensation from actual overflow.
They visually checked steam quality at the steam
relief valve at the top of the chimney, but this
tells us nothing about water which could be
flowing out the hose at a level below the relief
valve. Because of the danger of thermal runaway
with this device, flow rate would almost
certainly be set conservatively high, therefore
*some level of overflow would be expected.* They
do not actually measure overflow or rule it out.
What I see from the Kullander and Essen data,
from the increased rate of temperature rise
beginning at 60 degrees, is evidence for excess
heat of roughly 300 watts, far lower than what
they estimate on the assumption of full
vaporization. It is possible that the excess heat
is at the high figure, if full vaporization is
taking place *and* the flow rate is as assumed,
i.e., it actually occurs and continues as
originally measured. The lower excess heat,
though, would be enough to start boiling water,
it seems, producing some live steam to observe at the relief valve.
Even setting aside the prospect of fraud, this
report does not establish conclusively a high
rate of excess power (though 300 watts isn't too
shabby, it would still be of interest), and even
the lower rate is based on circumstantial
evidence, due to inadequate data. There was no control experiment.
They state:
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.
This has been the subject of much derision. The
Testo 650 is a relative humidity meter, and it
has no means of measuring what percentage of the
water is non-vaporized. It has a feature that
will calculate grams of water per cubic meter,
and they may have used this, but they would need
to do a calculation, still. If this were a steam
quality meter, giving a mass ratio for water as
steam and water as unevaporated mist, the figures
would be as described, but there is no such
function on the meter. Some have speculated that
they did read g/m^3, and then subtract from this
figure the value for live steam, assuming that
the difference was "non-vaporized," but this
would obviously neglect unvaporized water as
liquid, below the steam. It appears that the
meter, with live steam, is beyond its rated
operating range, so the numbers they came up with
may be meaningless. They don't state what numbers
they actually obtained from the meter, which does
not "measure unevaporated water." It measures
water vapor pressure, then calculates other
displayed values. Water vapor pressure does not
depend, in steam, wet or dry, on "unevaporated
water," water mist and water vapor may be
presumed to be in equilibrium; increased
temperature will be resisted by evaporation of
the mist, and decreased temperature will be
resisted by condensation of the vapor into mist,
or condensation elsewhere (i.e., onto surfaces).
This is probably a red herring. The most
significant issue is the possibility of some
level of unevaporated water, flowing through, and
next to that, possible problems with the reporting of flow rate.
