In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:37:04 -0500: Hi, [snip] >Actually, it worked pretty well. These were short tests, of 15 to 30 >minutes. If you run the test too long of course the water gets too hot. In >these tests they let the temperature go from 20 deg C up to around 60 deg C, >to capture about 8 million calories (33 MJ).
There is potential problem with this method. When the temperature of the collection water is low (room temperature), the steam will condense until the partial vapour pressure of the steam is correct for that temperature. At room temperature that will be a lot less than 1 atm, so the water in the device will boil at the correspondingly low pressure/temperature, i.e. at the temp of the collector. That means it takes less energy to boil the water than one is using in one's calculations. That's why Rossi said you would need a heat exchanger (reverse flow no doubt), which would ensure that the temperature at the outlet of the device remained at about 100 deg. C. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
