On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected]>wrote:
> > > On 11-11-15 12:10 PM, Joshua Cude wrote: > >> The total reactor (the ecat) clearly participates in the heating of the >> fluid, so the comparison of the overall power density is relevant. The much >> lower (claimed) overall power density coincides with the first >> demonstration that was not supposed to rely on making steam for the power >> calculation. It also coincides with what Rossi calls self-sustaining. >> That's suspicious. >> > > If I understand you, you've just said that the fact that the power density > in the most recent test coincided with the power density in the > "self-sustaining" mode is suspicious. Why do you say that? Or is that > what you meant at all? (I'm having trouble with the antecedent to "That".) > > I understand the issue regarding steam (and "suspicious" isn't the word > I'd use) but I don't see the connection between the self-sustaining mode > and the 28 Oct overall power density. > > Sorry, it was badly written. There are two related issues. One is that in the first demo that Rossi agrees not to use steam in his calculation of output power, the calculation of output power density is dramatically lower. That suggests to me that in previous steam calculating demos the power density was exaggerated by an overestimate of the degree of vaporization, just as many people suspected. If the bulk of the heating is from thermal mass inside the entire ecat, then overall power density is the metric of interest here, but one suspects that if he had used the old ecat, the power would also have been lower. To get his (smaller) over-unity without the suspected steam trick, it appears he used a suspected thermocouple placement trick. The other issue is that the first semi-public demo of operation without input power (so-called self-sustained mode) corresponds to the use of a much heavier ecat. This clearly makes heating from previously stored energy more plausible. So I'm suspicious of the claim that the self-sustained mode is sustained by energy production in the ecat (and nuclear energy production particularly), when it seems to be explainable by energy storage (or at most chemical energy production). OK, still badly written, but I hope it's better.
