A few days ago I speculated that a COP of at most two would be measured for an ECAT that undergoes only one power pulse starting from a cold state. Both of the table top sized box demonstrations performed by Rossi essentially operated in this manner and there seems to be plenty of controversy expressed by the skeptics as to the actual energy delivered. Having been told by Rossi that his ECAT operates with a COP of six specification they were expecting to measure six times as much output energy as applied electrical input energy. I was also expecting performance of this nature because at the time I had not generated a computer model utilizing a thermal control technique.
Placement of thermocouples by Rossi were less than optimum which left a question as to how much energy was actually being measured by the output instrumentation. This cloud remained over the demonstrations, in my opinion, and allowed doubt to exist as to whether or not he achieved his COP of six specification. I have since constructed a thermal energy controlled computer model of the ECAT that can be operated with a COP of six as Rossi insists. The model typically operates with a duty cycle of 1/3 to 1/4 depending upon how close I allow the core temperature to approach the thermal runaway level. I have also observed that essentially all of the information attributed to Rossi within his journal describing operation of the ECAT fits the model. I realized that I had not discussed calibration runs for my model to show that it can handle the case where the core is thermally inactive. I overlooked the importance of adding that information to my other post which should add credibility to the model predictions. Today I made another series of computer model runs and can report that I obtain a COP of approximately .995 under the inactive core condition. The expected value would be exactly 1, but my model does cease operation before every morsel of energy has been collected at the output node and there are typical rounding errors. The model is based upon many assumptions and for this reason can not be as accurate as I would prefer. I have relied upon the statements that Rossi has slowly leaked to the public and there is little doubt that he is leaving out some of the important parameters effecting operation of his ECAT device. Also, to generate a model of any sort I have had to choose a function representing the thermal power generated by the core as temperature changes. My choice is a forth order relationship for this series of runs and changing that function impacts the critical behavior of the device but not its general nature. The main point I wish to convey is that a one shot ECAT demonstration run will not be closely indicative of what is to be expected during continuous operation. One should not expect to see a high level of performance (COP) unless the ECAT operates for a significant number of hot power cycles. Some day soon I hope to compare his actual verified ECAT operation to the predictions of my latest model and to have an opportunity to adjust the parameters for a better fit. Dave
