Correction. My friend tells me I misunderstood the geometry of the
resistance heaters. They are cylindrical, not conical, with a hole in
the middle. A 0.5" copper pipe runs through them. So the heat transfer
is on the inside surface of the cylinders. Anyway, the total volume of
the two heaters is on the order of 0.6 L, as I said.
You will find a similar ratio of the volume of resistance heaters and
surface area in something like an 1.5 kW electric teakettle. I recently
purchased an expensive one that heats the water rapidly, without much
waste heat on the outside. (Meaning it does not get very hot.) These
devices have no trouble transferring heat at roughly the rate per unit
of surface area the Rossi device does at 16 kW.
Rossi's cell is definitely not a sphere, which as Steven Johnson points
out would be the worse shape.
Beene says that an expert in thermodynamics claims this is impossible.
This expert should take a moment to look inside an electric water heater.
- Jed
