Re: [Vo]:On deception
Jed wrote: "No, it was their idea." How do you know that? And in case this is one of those "oh well, they didn't say so but to me it sounds obvious that..." assumptions of yours: why on earth would anybody who has to write a paper like that bind their own hands behind their backs with such a primitive and counter intuitive approach to data logging?
Re: [Vo]:On deception
So you're not basing the confidence that an EE would find fraud impossible not on the report or on what Hartman and Essen said afterwards but primarily on an idealized version of what you believe they should have done to exclude fraud. Or did they say anywhere in the paper that they actually cut the wires themselves? I couldn't find anything about it. > "As noted, they made a video showing every minute of both tests. Rossi could > not have touched the equipment or the instruments." I found that video setup extremely odd. Setting up a camera would be ok, but it'd have to have been on a wider angle and from a greater distance. As it was, the camera only captured a small area around the PCE830 and they used it to eyeball the measurements instead of pulling the data from the PCE830s data logging, which is not only odd but insanely pedestrian and inconvenient. So why would they do it that way? Of course, the setup cuts both ways. It keeps Rossi from manipulating the PCE830 once it is running - but it also keeps the testers from bringing up the wave analyzer on the display. We should ask Essen - but I wouldn't be surprised if the camera thing wasn't their idea at all but Rossi's requirement in order to make sure that they wouldn't investigate his "industrial secret waveform" and still give them a (crude, inconvenient and inaccurate) way to estimate the input power measurements over time. Von: Jed Rothwell An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 20:22 Freitag, 31.Mai 2013 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:On deception Joshua Cude wrote: Watch the cheese video. The ends of the wires that the magician wants you to measure are already exposed. Clever, huh. Too clever by half. This would not begin to fool any scientist, electrician or EE on God's Green Earth. There has not been an electrician since Edison who would not check all the wires, and who might fall for this. No, they measured the voltage at the connection points on the 830, or some other previously prepared monitoring points. Quoting from the report: "As in the previous test, the LCD display of the electrical power meter (PCE-830) was continually filmed by a video camera. The clamp ammeters were connected upstream from the control box to ensure the trustworthiness of the measurements performed, and to produce a nonfalsifiable document (the video recording) of the measurements themselves." As noted, they made a video showing every minute of both tests. Rossi could not have touched the equipment or the instruments. This is proof that the people doing the tests are not naive idiots who trust Rossi, and that they took reasonable precautions against obvious tricks such as hidden wires. Additional messages from the authors confirm that they looked for things like a DC component in the electricity and they checked the equipment stand to sure it was not charged with electricity. There is not the slightest chance Rossi could have done anything so easy to discover as the "hidden wire under the insulation" trick. If that is best you can come up with, you have scrapped the bottom of the barrel and come up with nothing. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:On deception
For the record: Jed wrote: "Whether these people are experts or not I'm sure the Association reviewed their work carefully before issuing a statement. I do not think it takes long for an electrical engineer to conclude that there is no possibility of fraud in these tests." You've read their report, Terry, and you are an EE. And you would, based on what you read in the report and what Hartman and Essen said in interviews afterwards, sign a statement to the effect that "there is no possibility of fraud in these tests"??? Why would you do that? We know practically nothing about the input measurement apart from the fact that they used a PCE830 and that Hartman claims he lifted the controller from the table and couldn't see any extra cables. Is that enough for you? ________ Von: Terry Blanton An: Yamali Yamali CC: "vortex-l@eskimo.com" Gesendet: 18:46 Freitag, 31.Mai 2013 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:On deception Well, I graduated from Georgia Tech in 1977 with an EE, am a registered professional engineer and manage a group of mostly EE consulting engineers and I agree with Jed. On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Yamali Yamali wrote: > > Jed wrote: "I do not think it takes long for an electrical engineer to > conclude that there is no possibility of fraud in these tests." > > I bet you won't find any EE with any experience in the business who would > sign such a statement.
Re: [Vo]:On deception
Jed wrote: "I do not think it takes long for an electrical engineer to conclude that there is no possibility of fraud in these tests." I bet you won't find any EE with any experience in the business who would sign such a statement.
Re: [Vo]:On deception
"a group of experts sent by a power industry" Are you suggesting the power industry association had a hand in picking these experts and the group they eventually came up with included Giuseppe Levi and Hanno Essen based on their expertise? Von: Berke Durak An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 13:02 Freitag, 31.Mai 2013 Betreff: [Vo]:On deception To deceive an electronics guy, one may use a chemistry trick. To deceive a chemist, one may use software tricks. To deceive a computer scientist, one may use a physics trick. But using an electricity trick to deceive a group of experts sent by a power industry association is stupid. -- Berke Durak
Re: [Vo]:Idea: Using Stirling/turbine for car LENR Hybrid
I'd use a variable blade, fixed throttle turbine - ideally without a condenser for space and weight reasons (although just 400C may be too wastefull in terms of water consumption - higher temperatures would be much better). Safety will be a problem. We have to keep exhaust temperatures well below 100C at any point touchable from the outside - so planing the expansion path would be tricky but probably not impossible within the boudaries of a standard footprint. It would have to be a serial hybrid, of course. Running such a slowly responding source directly would be ok for a locomotive that can just dump whatever heat it doesn't need through a chiney and doesn't have to stop at a red light every couple of seconds - but not with a car. We built prototype hybrids with gas turbines more than a decade or so ago - so principally, yes, it would work. And it wouldn't even have to be significantly more expensive than a Chevy Volt (but we'd need a larger battery). Despite all that, I don't see this technology in any car soon (provided it exists). In my daydreams I rather see it as a large scale, extremely cheap heat source that could make the energetic disadvantages of hydrogen disappear - and making a hydrogen car/plane/cement-factory/blast-furness/whatever is probably much easier to do than trying to cope with the disadvantages of a slow/low temperture heatsource directly.
Re: [Vo]:RE: Defkalion video of internal testing
I agree that it looks messy and unprofessional. If my lab would look anything like it, I'd be fired on the spot. My main concern wouldn't be the distance to a pressurized container or any other particularity but rather the entire setup. This is supposed to be a nuclear reactor where nobody really understands how it works and how it behaves. Would anybody here simply span such a thing in a vice, pop a thermometer in, don't attach any aparent means of cooling and see how ever many kW it may or may not spit out? And stand right next to it, totally relaxed without the slightest safety measure - not even protective glasses or gloves or a glass wall or somebody with a fire extinguisher or, well, anything? If this is anything other than their very first experiments from a year or so ago, then at least my confidence in Defkalion would take somewhat of a plunge.
Re: [Vo]:Putting the nuclear debate into perspective
Sorry - answered to the wrong mail at first. > the standby diesel generators depend upon the grid They don't. The whole point about diesel backup power is that the grid might be unavailable. Fukujima happened because the diesels were damaged (strange idea, in hindsight, to place them so close and relatively unprotected to the waterline) and they shut down the nuclear reactors rather than leaving them running to provide power for continuous operation. But I see Jed's point about feasability in general. Human error will always happen and can never be ruled out - so sooner or later something like this is bound to happen again. It'll be slightly different, of course, and the lessons learned will be different, but eventually it'll happen. The thing I don't like about the nuclear discussion is that its often totally out of perspective. People talk about Fukujima (which, afaik, didn't cause any deaths) and forget the earthquake itself. I got in a discussion about nuclear energy recently with somebody who's major argument was that "20.000 dead people in Japan are enough". She seriously thought they were caused by radiation rather than water or fallen ceilings. Our government ordered a "stress test" on all our plants (in Germany they're all along streams rather than the coast) in the aftermath of Fukujima. One of the scenarios was the simulation of a quake causing a broken dam upstream from a plant. They did fairly well in the simulation - but the point is that the worst case scenario would still have caused more than a million deaths. All from the tidal wave washing downstream through narrow, densly populated valleys - none from radiation. Yet the conclusion was to get rid of nukes as fast as possible and (counter intuitively) subsidize alternatives like building more nice green and politically correct dams and large pump hydro storage plants... oh well.
Re: [Vo]:PESN: Rossi's Relationship With University of Bologna Continues
> the standby diesel generators depend upon the grid They don't. The whole point about diesel backup power is that the grid might be unavailable. Fukujima happened because the diesels were damaged (strange idea, in hindsight, to place them so close and relatively unprotected to the waterline) and they shut down the nuclear reactors rather than leaving them running to provide power for continuous operation. But I see Jed's point about feasability in general. Human error will always happen and can never be ruled out - so sooner or later something like this is bound to happen again. It'll be slightly different, of course, and the lessons learned will be different, but eventually it'll happen. The thing I don't like about the nuclear discussion is that its often totally out of perspective. People talk about Fukujima (which, afaik, didn't cause any deaths) and forget the earthquake itself. I got in a discussion about nuclear energy recently with somebody who's major argument was that "20.000 dead people in Japan are enough". She seriously thought they were caused by radiation rather than water or fallen ceilings. Our government ordered a "stress test" on all our plants (in Germany they're all along streams rather than the coast) in the aftermath of Fukujima. One of the scenarios was the simulation of a quake causing a broken dam upstream from a plant. They did fairly well in the simulation - but the point is that the worst case scenario would still have caused more than a million deaths. All from the tidal wave washing downstream through narrow, densly populated valleys - none from radiation. Yet the conclusion was to get rid of nukes as fast as possible and (counter intuitively) subsidize alternatives like building more nice green and politically correct dams and large pump hydro storage plants... oh well.
Re: [Vo]:10 to 15 MW wind turbines under development
They're also dominating the landscape ever more. Certain parts of Europe (Germany, Denmark) already look as if the land is used for nothing but wind turbines and high-voltage lines. If you've got enough landscape that'll probably not be much of a problem (yet). Over here it feels rather like you can't find a spot anywhere where you can turn round and not see at least a hundred of them. Considering they're contributing a mere 6% of the overall electricity (in Germany) in an unpredictable manner and utterly unrelated to demand, it is high time to find an alternative.
Re: [Vo]:The Eight Hour Rule
True. But you can actually observe flight. Sombody who saw Rossi's Gadget heating his Office in Ferrara would have no idea whether it really works or not, unless they have measured it in some way. There would have been no such uncertainty with somebody whitnessing the Wrights or Lilienthal take off. Von: Jed Rothwell An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 3:47 Mittwoch, 25.Januar 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:The Eight Hour Rule Harry Veeder wrote: Were the Wright brother keeping everything secret . . . Yes, they were. About as secret as Rossi is, and for the same reason: intellectual property. They did not get a patent until 1906, and in 1905 they had already made improvements which they hoped to include in a new patent application. They asked people not to take close-up photos. The patent laws were somewhat different back then, and premature disclosure was more of a problem for the inventor. . . . so that your >hypothetical friends of 1905 would have told >you not to publish the details? > That is what happened. The fact that Wrights were flying was not secret to people who followed aviation, but the technical details were skimpy. The mass media did not believe a word of it. Similar circumstances have reoccurred often in modern history, but this is example is particularly close. So close it is uncanny. It often happens that people try to withhold information on scientific or technological breakthroughs. That part is not unusual. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Opponents should please go away and form your own group
David Robertson wrote: "It is apparent to me that he has a very difficult problem trying to maintain stability of the power output and I have been doing some interesting simulation that tends to support this claim." Would you share that simulation? I can't help feeling that stability is an important point in Rossi's data - but there seems to be far too much of it rather than not enough. As far as I can see, he sets his water pumps to constant levels and claims measuring steam at the output for hours. That would mean his e-cats run for several hours without any variation in power at all. And not only that: they run with exactly the output sufficient to vaporize the amount of water he's pumping in. All that without any apparent means of control. If it really was steam, that would be very remarkable - both in terms of stability of the heat source and probably even more impressive in terms of how accurately he can predict it before he sets the pump rate. Apart from that - I thought he ended most of his demos because the time was up or people got bored or signed a contract or whatever - not because he feared a sudden runaway reaction (and after successfully hearting his office for more than 4(!) years with an e-cat, you should think that he cracked any stability problems by now anyway).
Re: [Vo]:University testing of the E-cat question asked on Rossi blog
Jones Beene wrote: "A good magic show can fool a few journalists and grad students and yes, Levi does not inspire confidence - but take a closer look at the "guests"." That misses one (the) major point about magic shows. When you go to Las Vegas or Moscow to see a magician make a white tiger disappear, you know its fake. Everybody in the audience knows its just a trick - even the journalists. They all wonder how its done but nobody believes the tiger really disappeared. Its just an illusion. Now consider the same setup - only this time some serious scientists have claimed to have invented a substance that makes objects disappear some twenty odd years before. Since then there has been great controversy about it. And while most of the scientific community has come round to not believing a word of it, a relatively small fraction of them ponders on, experimenting, reporting results (though none of them has ever seen more than a vague glimmer of fading opacity) and feels in general that "there is something - if only we could nail what it is". Now the same magician performs the same trick but he calls himself "Doctor" of some kind, performs his tricks in an old shipping container rather than a circus and has even built a cute little theory about how his wonder works. He can't really explain it because its all jumbled together from previous work done by others - but he doesn't have to. Whenever it gets inconsistent, he just shows a secretive face and claims he really HAS found what everybody else couldn't - only he unfortunately can't tell them (for apparent reasons). When he performs his trick with the disappearing tiger, they will ALL believe it - PhD or not. And the same is true for Rossi and people he invites to his demos. They believe it because they want to. They believe it because they are scientists interested (and probably "believing") in cold fusion and not police officers from an anti fraud unit or con artists or magicians who would know what to suspect and what to look out for. Claiming their word is any kind of proof or even encouragement is ridiculous. Send Bob Park or Lubos Motl to one of Rossi's demos - and see what they say.
Re: [Vo]:Lewan Mats says he never thought the reactor shipped
Only if you assume that all or most of the water has been vaporized to dry steam - and besides, Rossi could have started the demo with the storage already more or less heated up. We don't know. Nobody was there and whitnessed the preparations, afaik. One more thing that doesn't really add up: If you look at the power he's putting in and compare it with the temperature building up, you'll see that significantly more power is consumed than required to heat the water during that phase. Where does it go to? Do LENR reactions genuinely consume heat when they start up? And what chemical or physical or nuclear state do they convert it to? Or is the heat that's NOT immediately consumed by the water simply stored? Von: Harry Veeder An: Yamali Yamali Gesendet: 19:36 Freitag, 20.Januar 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Lewan Mats says he never thought the reactor shipped If water was being heated the whole time, I think such a scheme would require more electrical energy than was measured. Harry On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Harry Veeder wrote: > oops i forgot its cubed > Harry > > On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Yamali Yamali wrote: >> Harry wrote: "How do you hide 1 cubic meter of iron in the device which was >> tested?" >> >> I don't have to. First of all, less than 100 liters of water were heated in >> the desktop demos - and secondly, 10,000 cm3 are just 10 liters (not 1,000 >> liters) weighing merely 78kg (not over 7,000). The October 28 demo >> supposedly heated 3,700 or so liters in 107 modules. 27kg of iron (a slab of >> 30x20x6cm) per module would have been more than enough (unless I messed up >> the numbers somewhere along the line).
Re: [Vo]:"unpowered" test of Ecat
If it was, then the entire power calculation is screwed up. With that kind of pressure the water wouldn't convert to steam (and the hose where the steam came out during the demo would have looked dramatically different - 3 bar would be enough to prevent boiling at the measured temperatures). Maybe Rossi uses water as the isolator for his heat storage - and that isolator water was what shot out of the valve at the end. Von: Jed Rothwell An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 18:54 Freitag, 20.Januar 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:"unpowered" test of Ecat Eff Wivakeef wrote: The tap is opened and a GEYSER of steam under high pressure erupts. > > >WTF?| > > >Simple really, there is a store of very hot pressurised hot water stored >within the "Ecat" that has been heated by the electrical input power, There is no electric power input. That water was heated by cold fusion. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Lewan Mats says he never thought the reactor shipped
Harry wrote: "How do you hide 1 cubic meter of iron in the device which was tested?" I don't have to. First of all, less than 100 liters of water were heated in the desktop demos - and secondly, 10,000 cm3 are just 10 liters (not 1,000 liters) weighing merely 78kg (not over 7,000). The October 28 demo supposedly heated 3,700 or so liters in 107 modules. 27kg of iron (a slab of 30x20x6cm) per module would have been more than enough (unless I messed up the numbers somewhere along the line). Von: Harry Veeder An: Yamali Yamali Gesendet: 18:28 Freitag, 20.Januar 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Lewan Mats says he never thought the reactor shipped On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Yamali Yamali wrote: > Jed wrote: "...tell me the number right here..." > > I AM SORRY BUT THAT NUMBER IIS CONFIDENTIAL. ALL THOSE SNAKES AND CLOWNS OUT > THERE. COMPETIITION YOU KNOW. BUT I CAN SHOW YOU THE PCM IN A LARGE HEAVY > METAL BOX ON A TABLE AND PUMP WATER THROUGH IT TO MAKE SOME STEAM IN A > RUBBER HOSE AND THEN WE CAN CALCULATE THE MEGAJOULES FROM THERE - AND THEN > YOU WILL BELIEVE ME. DEAL? > > Sorry - couldn't resist. > > Jed, we've been there before. 10,000 cm3 of iron at 1,500 C would easily > hold enough energy to heat over 100 liters of water to the boiling point and > even vaporize some of it. How do you hide 1 cubic meter of iron in the device which was tested? Also it would weigh over 7000kg and break the table it was sitting on. Harry >Some isolation and you've got yourself a monster > e-cat. If you prefer a simpler solution, some dry SiO2 would do it, too. Or > maybe he used a combination of the two or something completely different > (though I guess it's purely thermal storage and that's why he came up with > the pre-heating procedure of something probably already pre-heated when the > demo starts) - but the point is: it wouldn't even have to be exotic or > especially clever. Heck - it may even be nothing like that and all he > really does is hiding cables or faking sensors or some such thing. > I know you believe such a simple setup is physically impossible - what I > don't get is why you believe at the same time that an Italian philosopher > has done what people like McKubre can't even dream of. Just going with > probabilities here - and I know what I find more likely.
Re: [Vo]:Lewan Mats says he never thought the reactor shipped
Jed wrote: "...tell me the number right here..." I AM SORRY BUT THAT NUMBER IIS CONFIDENTIAL. ALL THOSE SNAKES AND CLOWNS OUT THERE. COMPETIITION YOU KNOW. BUT I CAN SHOW YOU THE PCM IN A LARGE HEAVY METAL BOX ON A TABLE AND PUMP WATER THROUGH IT TO MAKE SOME STEAM IN A RUBBER HOSE AND THEN WE CAN CALCULATE THE MEGAJOULES FROM THERE - AND THEN YOU WILL BELIEVE ME. DEAL? Sorry - couldn't resist. Jed, we've been there before. 10,000 cm3 of iron at 1,500 C would easily hold enough energy to heat over 100 liters of water to the boiling point and even vaporize some of it. Some isolation and you've got yourself a monster e-cat. If you prefer a simpler solution, some dry SiO2 would do it, too. Or maybe he used a combination of the two or something completely different (though I guess it's purely thermal storage and that's why he came up with the pre-heating procedure of something probably already pre-heated when the demo starts) - but the point is: it wouldn't even have to be exotic or especially clever. Heck - it may even be nothing like that and all he really does is hiding cables or faking sensors or some such thing. I know you believe such a simple setup is physically impossible - what I don't get is why you believe at the same time that an Italian philosopher has done what people like McKubre can't even dream of. Just going with probabilities here - and I know what I find more likely. And for the record - the PCMs we use are, afaik, nothing special. Last I heard they're experimenting with a chemical company from France, trying to make salt hydrates stable enough for a couple thousand cycles and -60 C. I have no idea what the exact specifications are - probably something like 200j/g or so. Despite that, you're welcome to visiting us of course - if and when you come to Bavaria next time. The plant tour is well renowned for being interesting and worthwhile.
Re: [Vo]:Lewan Mats says he never thought the reactor shipped
Jed wrote: "No such stage magic tricks exist, or can exist. It is physically impossible." Look, we've had this discussion before, haven't we? It is not only possible, it is easy. Compared to fusing Nickel with Hydrogen its less than child's play. You don't even need a PCM for that - but even if you you used one it would be just standard technology. All you have is Rossi's word and all your unnamed sources (which you trust) have, is Rossi's word. The word of a man you think doesn't have any credibility. I see the point that one would have to judge the claims independently from the man - but as long as the claims haven't been verified independently, you just can't. I don't know what you mean saying "It has been done repeatedly thousands of miles from him...". Defkalion and the guy you know and trust who has "seen" it but doesn't really have more than the word of somebody who still DOES have some credibility - at least when given the benefit of doubt? I'm tempted to invite you to our lab. They're developing a light PCM solution which we'll integrate into the coolant cycles of our smaller diesel engines in order to help them getting up to operation temperatures on a cold start - replacing the voluminous thermos bottle kind of arrangement we've been using before. When you hear the numbers you'll probably be totally convinced that it must be LENR. Not sure I can find somebody there who's so un-credible as to claim that though. What they WILL tell you, however, is that the coolant reaches up to 107 C under load. Mind you, it never converts to steam but if you used Rossi's math you could easily prove that our diesel engines produce more energy than they consume - a lot more - overunity. Maybe I should invite Sterling Allan instead.
Re: [Vo]:Lewan Mats says he never thought the reactor shipped
Jed Rothwell wrote: "... Rossi has no credibility. ..." How can you come this far and still believe his e-cats work and he never faked anything? Haven't we dicussed endlessly how easy that would be? And yet you seem to believe that a guy without any credivility had his one honest moment in life just when it came to what would probably be the greatest breakthroughs in the history of science? I'm... ahh... puzzled.
Re: [Vo]:Rossi's behavior is more tragic than deceptive
All I can find is this: "There are thousands of researchers and engineers in the world trying to solve alternative energy challenges and National Instruments provides tools to many of these scientists. One example is the Leonardo Corporation who intends to use NI tools for various applications. Specific details are still in development." That says Rossi "intends" to eventually become a NI customer. So NI hasn't even confirmed a business relation - much less any knowledge of what Rossi is doing, let alone deep knowledge. Von: Jed Rothwell An: vortex-l@eskimo.com Gesendet: 21:29 Donnerstag, 19.Januar 2012 Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Rossi's behavior is more tragic than deceptive Mark Iverson-ZeroPoint wrote: Have to agree with Mary on this one… > >The only NI statement’s that I’ve seen were of a general nature. NI has a lot >of customers in the high energy physics world, and other hi-tech >environments. A VP of NI wrote a letter to Forbes confirming the relationship. Yes, NI has millions of customers as Mary Yogo said, but they do not write millions of letters to Forbes. They would only do this for a customer they consider important. If it was just some guy who bought Lab View they would not confirm or deny it, even if he registered his name in the customer database. The people at NI are not fools. They know that Rossi is controversial. They would not confirm the relationship without careful consideration and deep knowledge of what he is doing. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Interesting new video from ecat.com
So the "customer" who supposedly bought the blue problem was happy but didn't accept delivery due to something needing to be fixed or tidied up? No way. Many things about Rossi are hard to believe but probably the most preposterous idea of them all is the notion that there is a customer who really bought a rusty old shipping container full of junk for no other reason than wanting to use it as a heater in some real world application and would therefore require it to be "fixed" before they take delivery. Becoming a customer of Rossi at this stage of affairs can be nothing more than a disguised partnership. You didn't go out in 2011 to buy a cold fusion plant for $200k because you expected it to do actual work. Still don't, for that matter.
Re: [Vo]:Rossi comments on the "It was sent back" statement
That depends on how many gamma rays you're dealing with. Its just stochastics. A certain fraction will allways get through. All the shielding does is to reduce the likelihood for each one. So even 1 m solid lead won't reduce radiation to unmeasurable levels if there's enough of it inside. Jed Rothwell wrote: Jones Beene wrote: You simply CANNOT shield this kind of gamma radiation well with lead. Some always escapes. That is what experts in radiation say. Actually, you could stop them with enough lead. I believe it takes ~10 cm. If you had 1 m there would be no measurable radiation on the other side.
Re: [Vo]:Rossi comments on the "It was sent back" statement
> He has always said that there are gamma rays. He shields them with lead. There are no gamma rays leaving the device. This is all consistent. Actually no. It is impossible. You can't shield gamma rays completely. You could shield them enough to be so few that they would be undetectable. But if Rossi says he generates the heat by thermalizing them, then the e-cats don't have anywhere near enough mass to accomplish that. 1ev equals 1.6 × 10-19 joules. The supposedly 30 mm of lead would catch a little less than 99%. The devices generate about 10 kW. Rossi is alive. It just doesn't make any sense - unless... well... maybe thermalizing gamma is just a second job or doesn't happen at all.
Re: [Vo]:Rossi on the Smart Scarecrow Show
I was referring to this statement: > In Aussie Guy's summary of the key points of the show he stated "Heating is > via low energy Gammas hitting the lead shielding." And as I read it, it would imply that the energetic equivalent of 10 kW (or whatever an e-cat produces) would have to be thermalized in the lead shielding from gamma rays. So if the shield is 3 cm, the equivalent of about 10 kW x .01 or about 100 W would escape in form of 511 keV gamma. Easily enough to kill Rossi over the countless hours he stood right next to his machines on youtube alone (unless his famous brown coat is stuffed with something very different than goose feathers). The "thermalized radiation" therory doesn't hold if the 3 cm of lead is all there is. --- Nigel Dyer I am not sure if the point being made is that there can't be gamma radiation or else Rossi would be dead, or that there is gamma radiation and so it will never be a home appliance. The indications so far are that radiation levels are small, but not zero. This may well allow for home usage eventually, but there will be a lot of work to get through approvals. A lot of data on the variation with time of the radiation would be needed, and it may be necessary to have detectors and a quench system to deal with spikes. All of this would mean a far better understanding of the system than currently appears to be the case, so I fear that products for use in the home may be some way off, but still possible. Nigel
Re: [Vo]:Rossi on the Smart Scarecrow Show
> In Aussie Guy's summary of the key points of the show he stated "Heating is > via low energy Gammas hitting the lead shielding." In that case we'd be talking about liquid lead shielding. 3 cm would reduce 511 keV gamma by about 99%. Still - the equivalent of 10 kW x .01 would escape and Rossi would be dead, his product considered extremely hazardous and chances for a home unit below zero. Can't be.
Re: [Vo]:Rossi on the Smart Scarecrow Show
>> if shielded in his lead replaceable cartridge, would that make it acceptable to UL, etc? There is some radiation from smoke detectors now. Smoke detectors don't work with gamma radiation, afaik. And shielding would take a lot more than the wall of a small cartridge for 512 keV gamma. The dose is important, of course, but the fact that gamma radiation occurs at all in detectable quantities is a killer for home use. You can run a nuclear facility with authorized, trained personnel after countless years of certification and under constant scrutiny of the authorities. In Germany you can't even do that anymore due to (misguided?) politicians. But doing it at home? Just imagine - two years after Fukujima a guy from Italy goes to market with a device that emits detectable gamma radiation, doesn't know or at least won't tell anybody how it really works or how it may behave in unforseen conditions - and the authorities just say "Yes, ok, go ahead and sell it to everybody who wants one."? Its never going to happen that way. Probably a mute point since UL or TÜV or whoever won't ever see an e-cat anyway.
Re: [Vo]:Rossi on the Smart Scarecrow Show
>> 512 keV 180 deg Gammas have been detected. Then why is he still alive - and how can he possibly claim to put serious effort in developing home units when from that factor alone it is abundantly clear that none of this technology will ever run anywhere that somebody calls home?
Re: [Vo]:Rossi's pricing mismatch is really gross
>> 450 deg C E-Cats 1 MW industrial plants are not 60 deg C 10 kW home E-Cats You're right, of course. I thought we were talking about the 100 C thing in the shipping container. Where can I find specs for a 450 C version?
Re: [Vo]:Rossi's pricing mismatch is really gross
>> This is like asking anyone would buy a Data General Supernova minicomputer in 1979, knowing that in a few years personal computers would become available with far better price/performance ratios. Analogies like that don't apply. Early computers were expensive but there was no alternative. Yes, people knew that raw computing power per dollar would rocket sky high in few years - and yet they just had to buy the expensive stuff if they wanted the work done right then. All Rossi's machines do is produce heat. You can have that from hundreds of cheap devices and all Rossi's device has over them is a theoretical cost advantage in the (very) long run. So why would anybody buy unproven technology today that eventually breaks even in a couple of years when even the manufacturer himself says that the price is going to drop dramatically in a fraction of that time? It doesn't make any sense what so ever. Except if you do NOT want people to buy the expensive machines but keep them waiting for another year or so. I can only interpret Rossi's current talk about super-cheap e-cats in the near future as an elaborate excuse for not selling anything today.
Re: [Vo]:E-CAT Home to be $50/kW
If an e-cat is really nothing but a boiler with a steel core, some electronics (wouldn't be multi-purpose but possibly on a single ASIC), a heater element and connectors for some kind of heat exchanger, I'd expect a small home unit to cost about $ 400 to produce and ship from China. This is about what simple 1-cylinder 4-stroke engines cost. I don't know about nickel in the purities allegedly required and whatever else Rossi claims to use as a catalyst and all that - but looking at how primitive the equipment in Rossi's demo setups seems to be, it would probably be even cheaper. Lets say $300 per. If he plans to sell a million of them and a unit is rated at 10 kW and he sells them for $50/kW, he'd turn over $500 million at $300 million cost. That leaves $200 million gross margin to cover development, testing, certification for a bunch of markets, marketing, sales, administration (most of all that up front), capital cost etc. and of course profit to do all the good things Rossi promised when he set out. I have a hard time to believe that an e-cat works at all (in fact I don't) but even IF it works - it will surely be significantly more expensive than $50/kW for any size. And as long as there is no competition, he'd be crazy to sell them so low anyway.
Re: [Vo]:Ecat production will be robotized...
If Rossi would really want to keep prices low and come to market quickly, he'd not build up production in Europe, btw. Even compared with a fully automated factory somewhere in Italy, Asia would be much cheaper and faster to ramp up.
Re: [Vo]:Ecat production will be robotized...
I work for a large German car manufacturers in engine development. When we put
out a new engine, it takes about nine months from the last prototype to go-live
of an assembly line. Most of that time is spent in tool development (tools
("werkzeuge") is what we call everything we need to make and assemble the parts
we produce ourselves plus whatever components and subsystems we sourced out to
suppliers), calibration and production testing. I'd expect an e-cat to consist
only of a small fraction of the parts we need in an engine. On the other hand
we've been doing that forever and Rossi is just starting out. Provided he'd get
some professional, experienced help and doesn't plan to build his own factory
first, he should be able to run mass production at, say, Tazzari or a similar
outfit by mid 2012. It sounds neither conservative nor overly optimistic - as
long as the prototype he currently has really works and doesn't require any
fundamental redesigns.
AW: Re: [Vo]:A competent observer's assessment of Defkalion
I'm a little shocked by this. It isn't information nor opinion - more some kind of propaganda. You've heard from somebody you trust completely but can't say who and that somebody shared an opinion with you based on Defkalion asking him/her to do so, right? Who is protecting who? And from what?
Re: [Vo]:E-cat article by Haiko Leitz
> Stored heat can only emerge. It cannot stay hot. It has cool monotonically, >according to Newton's law: You're burning the last point I held for Rossi (which was that I wondered whether scientists could be fooled so easily - apparently they can). Newton's law would not be violated, of course. If you heat one side of a homogeneous, iron block (or the inside, for that matter) the other side will heat up gradually until the entire thing reaches equilibrium. Overall it will naturally cool from the moment the heat source is removed - but overall cooling is not what's in question. Thermal conductivity of Iron reduces with rising temperature. Combined with an appropriate insulator its easy to build a heat storage system that yields more or less constant temperatures at a particualr point for a long time after the initial heating at another point has stopped. And, as Joshua Cude already pointed out, with water as the cooling medium being the only thing measured, its even easier. It doesn't have to be especially elaborate or even magic. I'm not saying it is, but it can surely be a really cheap trick.
RE: [Vo]:E-cat article by Haiko Leitz
> The fact that it remained hot is all the proof you need. I don't get it. If there was no nuclear reaction and all of the energy came from thermal storage, then in deed the device will stay "hot" for a long time. However if all the heat came from a nuclear reaction, I'd expect it to cool down very fast once the reaction has been stopped. Are you implying that this particular kind of reaction exhibits the exact behavior as thermal storage when shut down? (i.e. cooling off at a very slow rate due to some continuing reaction despite H2 being shut down and whatever it supposedly takes to stop fusion). Since the details of the reaction are unknown - wouldn't that be an argument in favor of storage rather than against?
Re: [Vo]:E-cat article by Haiko Leitz
> You cannot heat the iron around the cell or in the call walls up to 543°C with electric heaters inside the cell. They would have to reach much higher temperatures than any electric heater is capable of. It wouldn't have to be uniformly heated to 543 C and couldn't uniformly remain at that temperature anyway. It would just have to be the average temperature in order to store the required energy. And there are electric heaters that reach well above 1.200 C.
Re: [Vo]:Reviewing Lewan's test of April 2011
I don't see how boiling a pot of water and sticking a thermometer somewhere into the swirling flow can possibly be as accurate as calculating it. Depending on the heat source, the pot and the placement of the thermometer you should always find a range of temperatures at least one or two degrees C wide. If it was pure water, then the 99.6 C measurement is just a confirmation for that (unless the pressure sensors of the Italian meteorological society are significantly less accurate than the thermocouples used by Mats - which is not imossible, of course). As far as the unaccounted for water is concerned: I found before/after weights of the hydrogen cylinder in the report but not from the machine itself. So the missing water is only unaccounted for if we assume that the eCat didn't contain any more liquid after the test than before - or did I miss the weight and it has been mentioned somewhere else?
Re: [Vo]:Reviewing Lewan's test of April 2011
I'm sorry if this has been discussed before. What I find odd about Newan's documentation is that he notes the boiling point at 99.5 C. He then adds .5 C to that on page two when explaining the outlet under approximately 200 mm or so of water. So he gets 100 C overall and a measured T out of slightly above 100 C - which would result in steam if we assume that the hose itself plus the valve its connected to don't need any pressure to let the steam pass through. However on April 28 pressure in Bologna was recorded at 1012 hPa throughout most of the afternoon which would lead to a boiling point of 100 C for pure water - not 99.5 C. However with a boiling point of 100 C and the outlet 200 mm under water the measured temperatures could not lead to boiling, let alone vaporization.
