From: Joshua Cude
Eric Walker wrote: the analogy only goes so far, in that it is harder in Rossi's case to recapture the heat and channel it back into the secondary source. But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. An ICE is self-sustaining. The ecat needs external power. They're different. Your example is wrong, no matter how much you wriggle. Yes it was a poor analogy, but so what? Cude's analysis is wrong no matter how much he obfuscates and by jumping on a poor analogy - he does not gain credibility. He would rather talk and invent imaginary problems, than listen and learn. Yes - the ICE is not a good analogy to ECat but in contrast ICF is an adequate metaphor - which is why he avoids ICF of course. Subcritical fission is also a good metaphor but Cude is not interested in actually finding truth, and he has no interest in addressing adequate metaphors. The ECat can indeed be self-sustaining in single or in multiple units, according to the inventor. The electrical input provides control and prevents runaway by permitting a lower mass of active material. Rossi uses electricity to make heat as part of ongoing phase-change cycling process known as recalescence; but the gain comes during cooling, not during heating. The applied heat only insures that the next cycle is primed, but that level of make-up heat can be applied from another ECat unit if necessary, or from natural gas, which he has demonstrated - but control is easier to handle and switch via electrical current. Apparently phase-change cycling is too difficult a topic for Cude to understand. I will try to explain it once again. Recalescence happens on cooling. It is a sudden rise in temperature at the expense of internal reordering of the active metal (nickel-hydrogen based). The internal reordering causes absorbed hydrogen to give up LENR energy in some way - which is the presently unknown quasi-nuclear feature of LENR. The phase-change energy (Gibbs free energy) itself - having caused some temporal gain - must then be fully compensated by heat from somewhere, if the reaction is to continue. It can be compensated internally without added electricity, if one is willing to give up control by having a large amount of reactant which pushes safety limits, but it is advisable to control the reaction by having less reactant and using applied electrical heat. In any given cycle, when operating with a low mass of reactant - the "excess energy" from hydrogen LENR gain alone may be insufficient in any single time-frame, even if over hours there is an average net excess of impressive proportions. Rossi may claim 6-1 but the evidence favors a lower ratio. At any rate, and for control purposes, additional externally available heat simply guarantees that the next cycle proceeds in a regular fashion. Technically electrical input is not needed after startup. Electrical input is used to control the process by applying bursts of heat faster and more regularly than the internal gain will permit but without the risk of runaway. This is not a particularly difficult concept to grasp for anyone with an open mind - who seeks to learn, instead of being afflicted with pathological negativity, combined with a misguided agenda to impede progress. Jones
