At 02:32 PM 8/4/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
No boiler is designed to create very wet steam
as a possibility. Now, the 18-hour test doesn't
involve steam. That was the point. But no
boiler will be tested with water at a liter per second!
That is incorrect. A large boiler will be tested at 1 L per second or more.
Jed, your comprehension of what is being written
is failing. Yes, there was an error there, in how
I expressed this. No boiler would be tested with
absolute maximum possible flow rate, raising the
temperature only five degrees, with the
measurement being taken inside the boiler, instead of external to it.
Rossi's upcoming 1 MW test will have to employ even higher flow rates.
The issue isn't the flow rate, per se, it is the
flow rate for a "boiler" with only 20 kW of power, perhaps.
This rate was perhaps a little high for a 16
kW reactor, because it meant the temperature difference was only ~5°C.
Bingo. "A little high." It had been suggested
that they raise the flow rate, but, instead of
raising it just enough, and not a whole lot more,
they raised it by a factor of 250X.
You want increased flow rate, we give you
increased flow rate! Are you clowns ever going to be satisfied?
I think a difference of 10°C to 15°C would be better.
Actually, a difference of about 60 degrees would
have been even better. I don't know if these people know what a "valve" is.
However, 1 L/s turned out to be a wise choice.
Levi reported in NyTeknik that power rose to
~130 kW for a while, with the outlet
temperature reaching 40°C. At a lower flow rate
this might have caused a serious accident.
What happened there is entirely unclear. The 130
kW calculated power showed up at the beginning.
Now, what I'd have expected would be that the
reactor might have been started up as it was, and
while there was the relatively high heat, coolant
flow would not have been reduced. But when it
stabilized, cooolant flow would have been reduced
to produce a more robust temperature rise.
And I doubt that a boiler would be tested with
the thermometer place in the boiler itself,
unless the design had been proven to produce
even temperatures within the boiler.
The thermometers were not placed in the Rossi
boiler itself. They were placed just outside it,
which is where they are placed in a regular
boiler test, in the boiler rooms I have seen.
You are depending on Rossi's descriptions of the
internals. I don't know if you've realized it,
but Rossi has no obligation to disclose those
internals, and nobody has verified any of them.
We must assume that the thermometer is inside.
The thermometer appears to be in the chimney, at
the bottom, so we could just as easily say that
it's in the cooling chamber. Further, remember
the band heater? That heats the cooling chamber.
Is the thermomenter in contact with the outside,
the surface against which the band heater is placed?
There was practically no power input to the E-cat
during the 18-hour test (after startup). There
was, as described, no way to control the cooling
water. So how was control established?
They usually use bimetallic dial thermometers.
At these temperature differences and flow rates
there is no way heat might have wicked directly to the temperature sensors.
Famous last words. "no way." You are thinking of
the cartridge heater. What about the band heater?
Have you ever wondered what the function of the
band heater is? It heats the outside of the E-cat.
Boiler test engineers are working with
long-proven designs that have known operating characteristics.
That has no bearing on calorimetry.
It sure does. There are many things that can go
wrong with calorimetry, you know that.
When the same stable temperatures and flow rates
are observed with a mysterious black box, you
can be certain that box is producing heat at the
same rate as a conventional boiler. The laws of physics are uniform.
Okay, what *stable* temperature was observed?
Where is the data? We have no plot of
temperature. We have no record of all the
measurements, i.e., many temperature
measurements. We have an estimate of stable
temperature from someone who was not there all the time.
What we have is a sketcy report, obviously of
interest. But Levi has not published the data,
nor any formal report, and it seems he has no
intention of doing so. Yet you want to rely on this report?
Isn't it interesting that the only test that had
a possibility of actually showing significant
heat not only shows much more heat than the open
demonstrations purport to show, but also involves nobody but involved persons.
Steam systems typically recycle the water, it's
recirculated, and there is no input water . . .
All industrial boilers produce hot water or
process steam which is consumed by the
industrial process. There would be no point to
circulating the steam as such. Perhaps if it
were used for space heating you might do that.
It may be condensed and reused, but that would
be no different from using any other feedwater
source. Except that it tends to be filthy, in my experience.
. . . beyond a small amount to replace losses,
typically from venting as needed. My own boiler
does not automatically feed water, you have to
press a button, to restore level as indicated on a water level glass.
This must refer to a space heating application.
Yup. Radiators in each room.
You would *never* want overflow, i.e, water
flowing in faster than is being boiled, except
transiently to restore the level.
This has no bearing on the 18-hour flowing water
test. That was a test of a water heat. Of course
the water overflows with a hot water heater. It
is used up, in the bath, washing machine or whatever the water is used for.
Yes, water overflows with a water heater. That is
not a steam application. Steam applications see
water flowing into the system as a problem. They
have enough trouble with condensation, but they
are designed to return the condensation to the boiler.
Of course you can measure heat with
calorimetry, but there are several problems with the 18-hour test.
No, there are not. It was the same as any boiler
test, and there are no problems with such tests.
The problems discussed here are imaginary. The
only problem is that it was not reported in
quite enough detail. I asked them again to tell
me the make and model of the flowmeter. If they
provide this information I will update the
LENR-CANR news section with this information.
I will grant, it would have been better for them
to record time sequenced data with a computer or
in a lab notebook, but a single value is acceptable.
In the end, it depends on the credibility of
Rossi, because unless Rossi can be trusted not
to manipulate the appearances, there is no test.
Of course it depends on them. Any experiment
does. And it could be completely fake.
That's right. Which is why, for any scientific
conclusions, we require independent confirmation.
This was a simple test, but they could easily
dummy up a sophisticated fake test, complete
with data and photos. Anyone can produce an
impressive set of graphs with totally fake
calorimetric data from a nonexistent test. I
have done that using the random number
generator in a spreadsheet. (I did it to show a
researcher what kind of graph I thought would be helpful in an upcoming study.)
Yup. Would Levi do this? Only if he totally
wanted to throw his career in the trash. So he's
not doing it! He's actually publishing nothing.
So he did a private test and saw something of interest. So?
I rather doubt that Levi is a fraud, per se.
Rossi, I abandoned my reserve, convinced that
I've seen strong evidence of manipulation of appearances.
Rossi has shown great skill at creating appearances.
On the contrary, Rossi would make the world's
worst con-man. He has shown incredible skill at
taking what should be self-evident,
unquestionably believable test data and making it seem suspicious.
I don't know if it's occurred to you, but Rossi
has managed to convince a lot of people who
continue to defend him. Apparently you as well.
You seem to have, like some others, a black and white view of this.
1. Rossi is a fraud.
2. Rossi's reactor is real.
Jed, the first statement is true. It does not
negate the second statemetn. They could both be
true. However, the first statement, if true,
means that we really can't tell about the second
statement without better information, uncontaminated.
It is as if he goes out of his way to make himself seem like an inept crook.
Indeed. So what if that created appearance (I
agree, and noted this long ago, and gave possible
reasons) includes doing some very suspicious
things? Like nonchalantly touching the power
controls when Lewan wants to look and see if there is some steam.
Jed, the assumption that a fraud would not want
to look like a fraud is a very naive assumption.
It's possible that, as one supporter of "Rossi
Reality" wrote, that he just saw some dust on the
controls and wanted to brush it off.
Sure, it's possible. But what he's done is to
call attention to the *possibility* of power
manipulation. He's impeached all of his demonstrations.
And that may be exactly what he wants!
I do not think he does this deliberately, as
Abd and others have speculated. Note that this
speculation contradicts the message I am
responding to here. Which is it? Is Rossi good
at making convincing data? Or is he trying to
throw people off his trail by making the whole
thing look fake? I say: neither. He just
happens to be bad at doing demonstrations.
It's possible that he's just as bad at interpreting his own test results!
Bottom line: Jed, non erat demonstrandum.
