Bob - The quote I supplied applies to the last HotCat design and you stated that the coaxial arrangement you envisioned was in the previous design. Sorry to conflate the two.
But the bottom line is that in the current design, which we must assume is advanced beyond the Penon design, the stainless capsule is probably not coaxial with another tube inside of it, due to the end caps - so the point is moot. However, it is a big deal - in general to determine whether or not plasmon/polaritons are involved. That could be the major breakthrough allowing high temperature operation, if true. If they are involved, then they probably cannot form easily inside the stainless capsule due to lack of a proper dielectric/metal surface interface. Of course if another ceramic tube were actually inside the stainless, rather than outside - then that arrangement would suffice, but there is no evidence for that arrangement due to the conical end caps. A third possibility would be that the capsule contains all four items needed: the hydride to release the hydrogen, the nickel, the catalyst and a dielectric ceramic on which plasmons form in powder form. From: Bob Higgins I believe in this vintage of the HotCat, the central axis was open to flowing environmental air. That is why the inside of the stainless inner tube would be painted black - to help with radiation from the inside (not that there is very much radiation - only from the ends). The central axis would mostly deliver heat via convection. The 2 coaxial inner tubes (that appear to be only a single tube) is the only logical place to contain the ingredients. Penon lists the components and there were only 4 observable components. As a welded unit, the central cylinder would appear as a single part - the welded coaxial reactor cell. Bob - This would be easier to imagine if it wasn't explicitly stated that "The most important element of the E-Cat HT was lodged inside the structure. It consisted of an AISI 310 steel cylinder, 3 mm thick and 33 mm in diameter, housing the powder charges. Two AISI 316 steel cone-shaped caps were hot-hammered in the cylinder, sealing it hermetically." IMO - the 3 mm wall thickness at the operating temperature would simply fail immediately without a ceramic retaining structure, and the "cone shaped" caps seem to preclude another coaxial tube. Jones
