You are assuming the reactor heat exchanger surface temperature went up
immediately. I doubt that happened as there is thermal mass involved, a
water cooled heat sink with a very low thermal resistance and if it
happened like that, the core would probably have melted as it could not
get rid of the excess heat fast enough. What I assume happened was they
went for a "Short Black" coffee hit and when they returned found the
outlet water temp had climbed to 40 deg C. When I get there I will ask
Rossi. This is one reason I want to have 100 ms data logging for at
least 24 hours as I need to fully understand the quirks of the Rossi
Black Box that may happen during a "Short Black" break.
AG
On 11/21/2011 6:27 AM, Mary Yugo wrote:
On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Peter Heckert
<peter.heck...@arcor.de <mailto:peter.heck...@arcor.de>> wrote:
I think the actual energy was lower.
It is not possible to transfer an energy of 120 kW via a small
surface into the water without producing steam bubbles.
It is for example possible to hold a glowing peace of iron under
water and it keeps glowing. This, because a thin layer of steam
covers the iron and isolates the heat from the water. Blacksmiths
do this
You make an excellent and important point. If the power really had
been 130 kW in that small a device for any appreciable time, it's
surface in contact with the water would have heated up very rapidly to
very high temperatures. The boiling would have transitioned from
nucleate to film and the resulting vapor in contact with the boiling
surface would have impeded the heat transfer. The likely result would
have been thermal runaway and an explosion or melt down. I think the
obvious error was in the flow measurement. In addition the
thermocouples were not calibrated and a small delta T was used.
According to the little Levi would say anyway. Maybe the whole thing
was a mistake or a ruse. How would we know?
For those not familiar with heat transfer from hot surfaces to
liquids, this may help:
"Film boiling
Main article: Leidenfrost effect
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect>
If a surface heating the liquid is significantly hotter than the
liquid then film boiling will occur, where a thin layer of vapor,
which has low thermal conductivity
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity>, insulates the
surface. This condition of a vapor film insulating the surface from
the liquid characterizes /film boiling/."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling
BTW, Film boiling is responsible for the phenomenon of fire walking.
It has nothing to do with mental states except for the state in which
someone is dumb enough to risk permanently injuring their feet via
burns in case something gets in the way of the protective vapor film.
