I have not had time to read all the messages today, but I was thinking about the known error sources.
1) The heat exchanger efficiency cannot be no more than 90%. That is because, the surface area of E-Cat and hose to heat exchanger was in total about 1.3 m². We do not know the surface temperature but if it was 60-85°C, that would be some 300-800 watt heat loss. Therefore 80-90% is reasonable quess for efficiency and in joules this takes 15-20 MJ. We still need to assume that heat were not escaped from the primary loop into drain. 2) Most of the energy of electricity went into preheating E-Cat (ΔT=75°C). 100 kg metal and 25-30 kg water takes about 18 MJ energy that does not show as output, because none of that heat energy makes it into the heat exchanger. Therefore this heat must be added to the total heat output of E-Cat. These are quite significant errors and both are known. Therefore they add up to 40 MJ to the total output that was estimated to be 100-120 MJ. Therefore total output was perhaps as high as 160 MJ. This means that if excess heat was provided by chemical energy, it is required 10 liters of thermite to be burned inside E-Cat. I think that this is significant to consider these rather well known error sources. At least they offer decent buffer, if there are errors in heat exchanger's ΔT due to too high water flow rate in secondary loop. Also, does Mats have good guesses, what was the reasonable water inflow rate into device? Was it the same as in September (11-13 kg/h)? If water inflow rate is known, this gives certain limits how well E-Cat can support boiling. And is there anyway to estimate the surface temperature of E-Cat? —Jouni
