I agree with you that a demonstration that lasts for a couple of months would be great and maybe one day we will observe it. Rossi stated in earlier posts that his ECAT would self destruct if the temperature reached beyond a certain point. According to his journal entries it would melt and cease to function .
If the ECAT device constitutes a positive feedback system then it exhibits certain characteristics during operation. One feature is that there likely will be a critical temperature at which the internally generated heat exactly matches the heat that is escaping through its surface. Any rise in temperature beyond this level will become self sustaining and continue to increase until something limits in the system. Earlier it was melting that stopped the activity and the device was ruined. Recently with the HOT CAT, it looks as though Rossi is depending upon surface radiation to keep the device from self destructing. If true, this is a major improvement in device protection but might not help with safety rules since the temperature would remain at a dangerous level until something comes along to quench it. The control of a positive feedback system might not be as simple as some think. I would hypothesize that these devices tend to exhibit some form of threshold below which they do not generate significant heat. This is murky at best with the limited information that we have been given. Once the threshold is passed, the heat power being internally generated has a positive temperature coefficient and is a function of the drive power. I would love to have the details of this functional relationship, but thus far it has been kept secret. The remainder of the system must have some thermal impedance to ambient that depends upon the structure and materials. This combination of function and impedance should cause another temperature to be defined at which the device becomes unstable. Here the device will behave like a feedback system with a gain of greater than 1 and in phase. It is my suspicion that Rossi is operating at a temperature above this second one where the device is unstable, but yet below the critical higher temperature where thermal run away occurs. If he gooses the device at a duty cycle, he can take advantage of the positive feedback behavior. This would allow him to exhibit a COP that is reasonable such as 6 and maintain control. The level of the drive needed to achieve this performance is in the vicinity of 1/3 of the output power. These numbers are mentioned within his journal in various locations. My discussion is based upon a simulation model since I have little else to call upon for details. The numbers appear to add up and that gives me confidence that the model may be fairly close to real life. One point, the drive heat source needs to be modulated at a fairly rapid rate which depends upon the ECAT internal time constants and design. A slow form of heat addition would not be capable of controlling the unit which eliminates using another ECAT for that purpose. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jones Beene <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, Oct 16, 2012 11:46 pm Subject: [Vo]:Hypothetically speaking ... Ever since the Rossi demo 20 months ago - where the possibility arose that an unusual type of "multiplier" effect existed with nickel hydride, which both produced excess heat but also relied on input heat from an electric cartridge heater for continuity ... doubts have been cast on that basic M.O. (modus operandi) After all, if a reaction is gainful - then why would it need continuing electrical input at all? There are answers to this question - but they are not entirely satisfactory. Of course, there is also the claim that on occasion, the nickel-hydride reaction is self-sustaining for periods of time, which can vary from short to long. Consequently, we must surmise that the electrical input is necessary to maintain a threshold condition for those times when the instantaneous gain drops below a certain average gain and the time constant for sustainability is more rapid than expected. If the threshold (trigger temperature) is the point to stay above, since an rapid quenching condition results below it - and during less robust periods, should it not be maintained, it is impossible to recover... then what we are talking about is the need for some type of "thermal momentum" to average out what is really a highly variable gain, and one with hidden rapid consequences. An interesting question, then, is why not dispense with ALL ELECTRICAL INPUT, at least in the design of one specific experiment, using an insulated kiln for the heat source. Since we are looking for sustainability only in this experiment, and not the details of operation, we can dispense with almost everything else as well. No thermocouples or plumbing, no valves or fancy reactor - just a pipe filled with nickel nanopowder mix, a hydride for the hydrogen - evacuated and sealed... then placed into a hot kiln where we will have perhaps a hundred pounds of preheated mass (for thermal momentum). Once the trigger condition for gain from nickel-hydride has been met in the sealed pipe, gas to the kiln is turned off - with the expectation that the gain from the pipe, along with the thermal momentum from the large mass of hot refractory bricks - will continue to maintain the average gain, thus providing continuity for a much longer period than expected. A month or two of continuous operation of the kiln with no input should remove all doubt. Jones
