Guys: The E-Cats have more than one resistance heater. With the last several demos, there have been two, one internal and one external...
This proposal only deals with the internal one, and assumes that the internal heating element is very near to the reactor, or inside the outer walls of the reactor (but not necessarily in the area where the Ni-H is... Is it possible to somehow read the heater's temperature by monitoring the voltage drop across it??? Wire does change resistance with temperature, and we're dealing with very large temps and significant amperage, so one might be able to at least estimate the temperature inside the reactor indirectly, and thus provide some feedback information to the control box via the same wires that power it. OR, turn off the power to the internal heater for short periods and connect it to a calibrated voltage in order to get a more accurate value for the voltage drop??? Seems fairly straight-forward... Then I have a question as to sources and sinks... Would not the heating element be acting more as a heat SINK when in steady-state? Actually, anything above what the max temp is for the given power into the heater. If the reactor is producing the amount of heat that it SEEMS to be, then the temperature of the Ni and Hydrogen in the reactor is way hotter than the internal heater. Heat will flow from hi to lo, so some of the heat from the Ni-H reaction is sinking into the heater. Do we know if this heating element is in contact with the water flowing thru; I think it must be? That would enhance its sinking effect. This may represent a sort of 'fine-tuning' that is needed to maintain this thing's stability when operating just above the liquid/vapor phase transition... What think ye? -Mark
