On 01/21/2011 11:13 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > I have done a ballpark analysis of the "hidden chemical fuel" scenario > for Rossi's one-hour test. I have looked at the water heater > specifications in my house and also a tabletop butane cook stove. I > conclude that chemical fuel cannot be the source of this heat, for a > number of reasons. To summarize: > > The device is too small to hold the fuel. > There are no air holes in the device.
Jed, you apparently didn't read the message I sent on this in response to one of your earlier posts. Thermite provides sufficient energy density, consumes no air, and produces only solid ash. Here's what I said, repeated: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some time in the last couple days, you asked me for a scenario under which Rossi could have faked it without the cooperation of anybody else present, and I came up dry.... but later, I observed to a friend that Rossi couldn't have faked it without help from the U of B staff, and tje friend's response was, "Sure he could." With the dual assumptions that * Only Rossi ever got to look inside the reactor * There have been no demonstrations lasting significantly longer than half an hour (unsubstantiated rumors of extremely long runs aside -- rumors are cheap) the friend wrote the following: > I don't see any need for an inside job. The main portion of the > reactor is a horizontal cylinder that looks about 6" in diameter by > 30" long. That's 10 or more liters of usable volume. Lots of > chemical reactions give you about 2 kCal/cc of reactants. You'd like > one without the inconvenience of gasses in or out, so the > thermite-type come to mind. These react aluminum powder with a metal > oxide to give aluminum oxide and the free metal. Magnesium powder > also works if you don't need a neatly fluid product, which we > certainly don't here. Screw feed the material into a cavity in an > aluminum block, and pull the heat away with drilled channels that boil > water to steam. The cavity might need a refractory liner, but I doubt > it. The conductivity of solid Al is so high, and the amount of > reactant at any time so small, that the products will go solid before > they wreck the cylinder. Besides, shortly after you start, you're > just dumping a little more wildly hot stuff on top of the previously > solidified products. You'd need some kind of sensor looking at the > block temperature or steam production, and use this to control either > the reactant or water feed-rate, and you'd want something (electric > arc?) to start the reaction. The easiest way to maintain control > might be to keep delivering small, discrete quantities of reactant, > each of which might need to be ignited (some of the 400W?) > > So, how far can you go with this? 12 kW net for 1/2 hour is 5.16 > MCal. Since thermites can give about 2 kCal/cc, this is about 2 1/2 > liters of reactants. If you need separate initial volume for the > reactants and the products-to-be, then you need ~5 liters, plus space > for the chamber/boiler and controller. So 1/2 hour may be getting > near the easy-to-reach upper limit of chemical chicanery for 12 kW in > a device this size. I'm sure there are other reactions, though, and > cleverer constructions, so perhaps a few times longer might be achieved.