On 30 November 2011 06:10, Berke Durak <[email protected]> wrote: > > So far I haven't found anything significantly wrong with the 1 MW > demo. Also I still don't understand your "instantaneous power > transfer discontinuity" argument.
It's pretty simple: you have a large quantity of water - about 180grams per second entering the ecats, that water is being heated by the heat source within the e-cats to match the rest of the water already in the e-cats, and before the onset of boiling that requires about 70kW. But then according to Rossi just as the boiling starts "a miracle occurs" and the power output somehow rises instantaneously to about 470kW to convert all the water entering the e-cats into steam. It is pretty obvious that this cannot happen. The water level in the e-cats is about the same just after the start of boiling as it was just before so heat transfer from the e-cats to the water won't be able to suddenly increase by 7 times - that would require a massive instantaneous increase in the metal temperature to compensate for the extra heat energy being sucked out of the ecats by steam production. There is no way that this could happen in reality without turning on massive 450kW electric heater immersed in the water just as it hit boiling point. As an analogy think of driving a truck along at 20mph, when you accelerate you don't instantaneously hit 60mph, it takes a long time to build up speed due to inertia (kinetic in this analogy, thermal for the ecat). The simple, sensible and physically possible explanation that matches the data provided is that the power output ramps up slowly (at some unknown rate) with the water level in the ecats rising. After the onset of boiling some increasing portion of the inflow is being turned into steam with the water level either still rising or perhaps as Joshua suggests overflowing the ecats into the outlet pipe. I also think it quite likely that the water trap is ineffective as: 1/ The water trap did have its valve closed at some point during the demo (why??). 2/ Above about 10m/s of steam flow the water will start to be lifted off the pipe and turned into a spray (like strong wind over the sea), and the steam was probably flowing much faster than this. This effect will also spread out the flow into a thin film layer all around the circumference of the pipe, as water is always whipped off the thickest part of the flow first owing to the effects of viscosity this eliminates the expected water stream in the bottom of the pipe, and is something I have seen frequently with oil entrainment in clear crankcase blow-by hoses during IC engine testing. 3/ There might have been slight obstructions at the water trap entrance that would prevent fast flowing water from entering. For example drill burrs from construction, small upstream ramp from welding or braizing, or the water trap pipe might have penetrated the main pipe slightly. Small things like that would prevent a fast flowing <170g/s film of water being whipped along the pipe at high speed by steam flow, from entering the water trap tube. Also that water flow would be at most a mm thick and would be travelling at at least a few m/s so could very well fly straight over a hole or be diverted around it by other minor obstructions. So basically I think Joshua is right, though I think it unlikely that it is a scam, I do think that the power output was somewhere in the 70-470kW range, with no way of knowing exactly what.
