Alan J Fletcher wrote:
At 11:20 AM 10/10/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I said you will never get to the bottom of this, and it is not worth
trying.
You're probably right on that. So we're left with a purely qualitative
demonstration. Ah well.
Well, mainly qualitative. However, you can make a reasonable minimum or
worst-case estimate of the power. You can draw some lines and be sure
the heat did not go below them. Look at things such as the surface
temperature of the reactor, the fact that the boiling could be heard, in
the worst-case scenario about where the temperature probe might be
placed. There is no doubt that the reactor was producing kilowatts
during the four-hour heat after death event. If that had only been 150 W
of excess heat, let's say, there is no way the surface of the reactor
would be palpably hot, given all the heat that the flow of water can remove.
Also look at the response during the initial phase when there was 2.8 kW
of electric power being input. I think it is almost certain there was
excess power during this segment. Maybe not as much as shown here, given
the low likely recovery rate, but there must have been some. If there
was no excess power Rossi would never have turned off the input power,
and the reactor would not have taken off like a rocket with heat after
death. If there had been a balance of input and output during that
segment, that would mean no reaction is taking place. In that case, the
moment they turned off the input power the temperature would have
dropped straight down monotonically.
In the worst case you can assume there was close to a balance during the
initial segment, so output was ~2.8 kW * ~70% recovery rate, or roughly
2 kW, instead of ~3 kW. You can see that output went much higher during
the first two hours of heat after death. The graph shows it was around
5.5 kW. Adjusting for the no-heat-during-startup scenario fudge factor
that would be ~3.3 kW. That is still very substantial. There is no way
that is not anomalous.
As I said, I'm sure there was excess heat during the startup phase,
meaning it had to be over 2.8 kW. You never have H.A.D. without excess
beforehand. What I do not know is the recovery rate and the fudge factor
that may be needed because the outlet TC may have been too close to the
steam pipe. That is a lot of uncertainty, but not unlimited total
uncertainty. You can make a reasonable estimate of these things. You
know that a recovery rate of 30% would be ridiculous, as would 95%. 70%
is a reasonable estimate. If you look carefully you can probably find
some data to estimate it with more confidence. You know what the average
temperature of the heat exchanger should be given the volume of steam
and cold tap water. I do not think the outlet thermocouple could be any
higher than the average temperature. I expect it is lower. Even though
the TC is close to the steam pipe, mostly it is picking up the water
pipe temperature.
- Jed
