This is a lot of good work, Alan. I am amazed at the number of high quality posts on Vortex. I am having trouble keeping up because each post warrants a good deal of thought.
I examined pictures of the manifold and created a diagram to capture the important features. [I made a small .png version of the diagram that I am trying to include.] I am not sure it is schematically correct yet. A characteristic that I believe is very important in the analysis of the possible temperature contamination is the issue of the fittings used in the manifold. These use pipe threads, and appear to be NPT because of the use of pipe dope. At each junction of pipe threads, there will be a large thermal resistance compared to continuous brass. Analysis of these across-the-thread resistances are going to be hard, particularly with pipe dope and or Teflon tape present as is required to seal NPT. The resistance across the thread boundaries will be high and the net effect will be to significantly decouple the Tout thermocouple from the manifold. These thread boundary effects don't appear to be included in your model. If the 35kB .png of the diagram I created doesn't make it through the thread, email me and I will send it to you direct. Regards, Bob Higgins -----Original Message----- From: Alan J Fletcher [mailto:a...@well.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 6:49 PM I have built a SPICE circuit simulation model of the manifold --- and the results are VERY BAD !!!! An initial small-scale model indicates that the ENTIRE top of the manifold is "contaminated" by the HOT side. Even with a "stepped" manifold (representing the various pipe fittings) , and with the thermocouple at the END of the tube, I get a 10 C ERROR !!!!! My preliminary results are at : http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_oct11_spice.php I can make a more accurate model with Spice, but a Finite Element Model is clearly needed.
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