I wrote:
I seriously recommend you try that before making more assertions about this test. It is not expensive or difficult to put insulation around an 8-gallon pot of boiling hot water. Turn off the gas, move the pot to an blanket of insulation, and cover it up. Use ordinary household insulation and don't make it thick or well sealed . . .
Several layers of bubble wrap are probably as good as the insulation Rossi used. The pink fiberglass blanket insulation in U.S. houses is too good, but you could use that. I promise you will see the water is lukewarm after four hours. It will not continue boiling, or remain close to boiling temperature. It will not continue producing steam that goes through a heat exchanger and causes a 5 or 10°C temperature rise anywhere in the heat exchanger. It will not make a pipe so hot it burns someone who touches it accidentally. All these things are physically impossible.
This is especially the case when you continue filling the pot with tap water, replacing the entire volume of it twice.
Seriously, try it! Don't keep making assertions that fly in the face of common sense and elementary physics.
The evidence for heat production is so overwhelming it is ridiculous that anyone would question it. It would be overwhelming even if there was not a single temperature sensor anywhere in the system. Yes, it is infuriating that Rossi did not calibrate, properly place the sensors, test with a blank, or even bother to insert an SD card into the meter. But you cannot ignore basic physics just because you are upset with Rossi, or just because the test could have been done better.
- Jed
