On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:39 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 3:54 AM, Joshua Cude <[email protected]> wrote: > > But the ecat just uses electricity to make heat. So if the ecat already >> makes heat, it should self-sustain on that. Like combustion. >> > > I passed over this point too quickly. One question is why in Rossi's > device the heat generated by the reaction would not be sufficient to > sustain the reaction, as in combustion, without some kind of external > drive. This does seem like an odd requirement. > > Giving Rossi the benefit of the doubt, the fact that an > external stimulus is required in the form of resistance heating (also heat, > as has been pointed out), this seems to indicate that one of two phenomena, > or both, would need to be occurring: > > - The general area of the reaction is somewhat localized, and the > normal thermal gradient that would lead heat to dissipate from that > location must be countered from outside of it by the resistance heaters, so > that sufficient heat is retained in that area. > > Right. External heat would affect the temperature gradient. But remember it took only a fraction of the external 360 W to cause the reaction power to initiate and increase to 1.6 kW, so it seems implausible that the 1.6 kW would not be enough to sustain it. - > The reaction depends upon a flux of heat, and not simply elevated an temperature on its own. Heat is random motion, so it's hard to see how at the site of the potential reaction the direction of the flux would make a difference, and rate of the flux would be far higher at 1.6 kW than at 360 W.
