On 11-12-26 01:51 PM, Akira Shirakawa wrote:
On 2011-12-26 19:23, Mary Yugo wrote:
Want respect, not mention tons of fame and fortune? Close the loop and
make them self running except for (rare) refueling. You'd be the
first. That's for sure.
With a small thermal excess power it's not trivial to close the loop
in my opinion. It would be better to work on accurate (but not overly
complex) calorimetry and to find clear evidence that nuclear reactions
are occurring.
The problem all along has been that wet CF cells produce low grade
heat: The output is only slightly warmer than the input. Consequently
it's almost impossible to do anything useful with it, including close
the loop.
Wikipedia gives the Carnot efficiency of a heat engine as 1 - (Tc /Th).
If the temp rise in the cell which is attributable to the "PF Effect" is
no more than ten degrees (which is probably typical of wet CF cells),
then we're looking at a Carnot efficiency of roughly 1 - (283/273), or
about 3.5 percent.
So, a COP much below 30 will not get you in the door if you want to self
power such a cell. A COP of 5 makes such a cell worthless, save as a
curiosity.
Note that you can heat the whole system up by pumping in more energy,
which might seem like a way to get the Carnot efficiency up: Use a room
temperature bath as your "cold reservoir" and heat the cell up to
boiling. Such a strategy tends to be self defeating, though, because
all the extra energy you need to put in to heat the cell far above
ambient sends your COP into the bucket.
(This is, of course, one reason Rossi's gadget is such a big noise: It
supposedly produces high grade heat, which is easy to use for stuff.)
