I hope for the safety of the participants an automatic safety
pressure relief valve is in the system, preferably located right next
to and right before the drain cut-off valve. It appeared to me the
prior test showed signs of a flow restriction somewhere within the E-
cat, a restriction that closed with higher temperature, and that the
reduced flow reduced the water cooling effect and therefore caused
water stored within the E-cat to boil. As the flow is reduced the
pressure head to the pump is increased, thus further reducing flow,
creating a feedback loop. If true, then this alone is dangerous. It
is even more dangerous if warm or hot water will be fed back into the
E-cat.
It is critical that the water *flow* and temperature into the E-cat
be measured in the primary circuit. Now that warm or hot water will
be fed back into the E-cat this is even more true. Comparatively
fast dynamics may develop. This affects both safety and the quality
of the calorimetry, and the ability to interpret results. The new E-
cat, with a double layer of lead and steel pressure vessel, has a
large thermal mass. If a momentary burst of steam occurs,
overwhelming the condensing heat exchanger, i.e. returning some
steam, then a massive pressure buildup in the primary circuit is
feasible. An emergency pressure relief value in the primary circuit
itself is needed, or simply a vent and reservoir prior to the input
pump to insure water is returned at atmospheric pressure.
A pressure transducer with alarm would not be a bad idea. If I were
present I would pay a lot of attention to a pressure gauge - so I
would have some chance of being able to leave before an event.
It would seem to be common sense that preliminary tests would be made
before a large group of scientists travel a long way only to watch.
Manually read accumulated flow water meters are inexpensive. You
would think at minimum the accumulated flow would be directly
measured in both circuits as a backup to any instantaneous flow
measurements.
I earlier provided references for sources for EU kWh meters. They
are not very expensive. Given the highly variable duty cycles of the
E-cat power supplies, a kWh meter recorded at least every 10 to 20
minutes, and at the time of any control events, is essential for any
credibility, as you note. A Clarke-Hess meter, though very
expensive, is of course the gold standard, because it picks up the
power in spikes, but is not essential if spikes are filtered.
You would think there would be companies, agencies, or individuals
willing to donate quality instrumentation for a test like this.
There are no doubt companies like EarthTech International that would
even do all the calorimetry for free.
I hope good and continuous video taping is done.
On Oct 2, 2011, at 6:55 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
The upcoming test of Rossi's reactor is described here:
http://pesn.com/
2011/09/26/9501920_NobelPrize_Laureate_to_Test_Cold_Fusion_E-Cat/
This says there will be a primary steam loop, a heat exchanger, and
a secondary flowing water loop. Rossi confirmed this in his blog.
This also says the reactor will be run in heat after death mode for
extended periods. The article has various other details. I
discussed it with some of the people who will participate. They
confirm these details. So if things go according to plan, this will
be much better than previous tests. It may not be definitive but it
will be an important step forward.
I made some suggestions to the participants such as:
They should record all parameters in a single computer, so that the
time stamps correlate. They say they will do this.
They should record watts, not just amperes, and they should record
the flow rate, for goodness sake. I believe they will do this.
They should have the paper edited by a native speaker of English
before publishing. They will do this.
They should confirm all parameters with hand-held instruments, for
example, they should measure the flow with a flow meter and also a
stopwatch, a bucket and a weight scale. I sure hope they do this.
They should report the make and model of every instrument used in
the test.
I have strongly recommended they publish the complete dataset in a
spreadsheet, similar to the spreadsheet Lewan uploaded recently. No
response yet, but I hope they will do this.
In my opinion the totality of the evidence from the previous tests
has been convincing, especially the February 18-hour test with
flowing water and the recent test with 30 minutes of heat after
death. Convincing, yes, but I also agree with critics who say these
tests have been sloppy, and poorly reported. When I say "poorly
reported" I mean, for example, they should have listed the make and
model of all instruments, as I told them. I felt silly saying this
to professional scientists. This is teaching grandma how to suck
eggs. In high school in college you learn that all technical papers
should include the make and model. But they did not do this, so I
thought I should tell them.
To give another example, they should have reported the readings
from the flow meter in the 18-hour test. It appears to be an
analog, non-electronic meter. In that case, they should have
reported the instantaneous readings every 10 minutes, and the final
cumulative reading. Of course it is better to use an electronic
meter and record the data along with input power and temperatures
every minute. The instruments typically measure these values
thousands of times a second, before recording an average value
periodically, one to five times per minute. There is no need to
record more frequently than this in a test that lasts an hour or
longer.
- Jed
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
