At 05:28 PM 8/20/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
James Bowery <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
"Is the diseconomy of scale primarily driven by the large number of
thermocouples implied by the squared law of the surface area?"
The answer was "Yes."
Right. Yes. Note that this is not a problem with flow calorimeters,
which is why I recommend one for this application.
Jed is an expert on calorimetry.
Working with a cold fusion researcher using isoperibolic calorimetry,
where one correlates, through calibration, the temperature of a
device or enclosure with power dissipation, who also has a Seebeck,
which directly measures power dissipation regardless of temperature
(within limits), I noticed that one of the problems being seen was
that the reaction itself varied with temperature. In order to study
the reaction's variability with other conditions, it would be
important to operate at constant temperature.
Flow calorimetry is often used this way, at least it was by SRI. They
kept the cell heated at a constant temperature, cooled by flow, and
XP was defined as the reduction in heating necessary for constant
coolant temperature. (Am I right, do I remember that they actually
heated the "coolant"?)
But one could use internal heating to maintain a cell at constant
temperature, and then back off on that heating as necessary to keep
the cell at the same temperature even if there is XP. The XP is the
amount backed off.
There are many ways to err, though. Still, this approach suggests
running at a higher temperature, which generally increases the
reaction, thus increasing the signal/noise ratio.
This is the opposite of what you'd want to do if the goal is to
demonstrate power production. It can reduce apparent COP. But the
goal in experiments like this is measuring XP under controlled
conditions and controlling the temperature is an obviously desirable approach.
