Rossi assumes the output flow rate is equal to the input flow rate throughout the 5.5 hours of the power calculation. The only way to be sure that the output flow rate is *at least* that value is if the ecats started out full. That also seems most consistent with the temperature profile during preheating, but that's pretty hard to guess. This assumption puts the bounds on the output power between 70 kW and 470 kW depending on the degree of vaporization. The trap is supposed to help with this but as I've argued, I don't believe it does, and at 3:00 it seems pretty clear that the valve was closed anyway. (The power could be even higher if the ecats end up empty at the end, but then the steam would surely have been hotter.)
If you allow the possibility that the ecats can be any level at 12:30, depending on when the pumps were started and on the flow rate before 12:30, then it's pretty hard to say anything about the output flow rate. If they start out nearly empty, and end up full, then the total output can be as low as 4.7 L per ecat. Even if all the steam were dry in this case, that still only amounts to 67 kW average power. But if the steam were very wet in this case, the power could be as low as 9 kW average. So this possibility opens up the range of powers consistent with the reported data all the way from 9 kW to 470 kW. And even if only dry steam is considered, from 67 kW to 470 kW. If it's 9 kW, then the megacat is big energy hog. I know I've said before that if the water in the ecats is low, then the steam should be heated above the boiling point, but in the event of a low output flow rate, superheated steam is not necessary to balance the power, and maybe if the churning water keeps the heaters wet, the vapor could still be in equilibrium with the liquid. But really, this is all far too much speculation. What kind of a competent engineer produces a report for which the reported measurements are consistent with output power between 9 kW and 470 kW? And the means to do much better are staring them in the face. They condense the output, so they could very easily have measured the total output volume with a simple flowmeter. They could have measured the steam velocity to get a handle on the steam quality. They could have reduced the flow rate to produce superheated steam, and measured the pressure to verify that it's above the local boiling point, and then the steam quality would not be in doubt. Instead they used exactly the method of their previous steam producing tests which resulted in dozens of people complaining that the output power was indeterminate. It seems clear that Fioravanti did not do his job. Or he did exactly what Rossi wanted, allowing them to claim 470 kW without actually measuring anything incorrectly, but with power far below that.
