On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Even if that were true, a 30 L vessel of water cannot remain at boiling > temperature for 4 hours, > Why not? If it's perfectly insulated it can stay at boiling temperature indefinitely. It all depends on the rate that energy is removed, and the thermal mass of the thing, and it weighs 100 kg. The heat exchanger doesn't help here, because Rossi didn't think to measure the temperature of the *water* flowing through it. There seems to be some disagreement about the output flow rate so the evidence does not support more than say 500 W or 1 kW output, to give 13 MJ total at the high end. That's far less than the energy input during the first 2 hours, and small enough to be stored by fire brick inside the device. And that's ignoring the fact that a kg of alcohol could provide that much energy. The main thing is, that these possibilities could be excluded so easily if Rossi wanted to (and could), but he doesn't, which probably means he can't.

