10KW LENR demonstrator (new thread)

[Giorgio]

1. The heat from the pump in negligible.

Generally true, and it becomes more and more negligible as the dT increase.

3. It would be a BIG pot if the test is run at 20kW (the rated size of one module) for 24 hours. Anyway, even that would not satisfy the critics. They think it doesn't work so any measurement showing that it does must be in error.

You are missing objectiveness here.
Just because you want it to be real it does not mean that we can accept random measurements from Rossi.
There are plenty of easy and scientifically accepted way to prove his claims. The truth is that until now he always choose ambiguous experimental set ups.
Is up to him to have a sound and solid set up for this experiment and if he chooses yet again a weak set up than the picture will be clear (at least for me).

[Giorgio]

Giorgio,

A properly selected heat exchanger can be throttled quite smoothly to get four or five times the load without issues.

Please quit trying to teach granny how to suck eggs.
I suppose what Dr. Levi found - a range from 15 - 130 kW - should be ignored.
Obviously, you think you know more about the system than the inventor.

Well, pardon me if I talk about my field.
I guess you are right, let a pseudo engineer and a physicist do what a trained Thermo Fluids Engineer should do. Why do they need competence after all?

Just do not complain if people will than find all sort of holes in their experiments

[bk78]

I have neither the time nor the inclination to educate you, but as an engineer I have done that on several occasions.

The thermometers used in previous demonstrations were not capable of this. Let's have a look whether you have the time and inclination to answer my other uncomfortable questions.

The sale of Rossi's 1 MW plant depends on him exceeding the x6 factor, as you would know if you had been following the subject.

That does not answer my question. Did Rossi say that himself? Or his potential customer?

1. The heat from the pump in negligible.

2. At least a closed system would prevent the reactor from furring up and there may be other advantages to keeping the two systems at different temperatures or pressures for domestic use. You don't know.

3. It would be a BIG pot if the test is run at 20kW (the rated size of one module) for 24 hours. Anyway, even that would not satisfy the critics. They think it doesn't work so any measurement showing that it does must be in error.

1. I agree. Which immediately brings me to the next point. Could you tell me, from engineer to engineer, why Rossi is controlling this machine with a heater instead of a pump? The latter would boost the COP to a factor of 100 at least. He could install a small generator, buffered with a car battery (for security reasons, you know...), and pull the plug. This would make any discussion about steam quality pointless - as long as something hot is coming out for a while, there must be something to it. It also would be more valuable in practical terms, because it does not consume expensive electricity (and a grid connection).
2. Why is that?
3. Those mean critics never asked for a 1MW test. They asked for independent testing.
"They think it doesn't work so any measurement showing that it does must be in error."
You claim to be an engineer, but I can tell you, any engineer can instantly think of half a dozed methods of how to fake any of the previous tests. And what measurement showed that it works? To date, we do not have a single MEASUREMENT of the output enthalpy! Why is poor Rossi unable to do that and instead takes his time shouting at the critics?

(High dT vs low dT)
More to the point, why should he? The capacity of the heat exchanger needs to be well above the normal output of the E-Cat as we know the E-Cat can produce a range of outputs and may not be stable. Better to have some capacity in hand for safety reasons.

If the heat exchanger is critical to safety, then why does he introduce a second loop? What happens when
A) the pump of the primary loop fails? The heat exchanger gets stuck?
B) the pump of the secondary loop fails?
Do you understand that, since the reactor is supposed to produce much more heat than it consumes, even stopping the electric heater would not make a difference?
What does this mean for home installations?

[Axil]

Get a grip site members, the end is near.

FYI:10/6/2011 E-Cat test.

Some Rossi test info that has a good chance of being correct:

http://pesn.com/2011/09/26/9501920_Nobe ... ion_E-Cat/

If the Reactor runs is self-sustaining mode, with only a small amount of electrical input to sustain instruments, for a extended period of hours which produces a significant and steady power output, that will be convincing to me.

It won't be long now...

[Joseph Chikva]

It is quite possible to measure temperatures to better than 0.1°C accuracy.

Have you ever measure your body's temperature?
The normal body's temperature 36.6 deg Celsius. And very conventional even Chinese thermometer measures the difference between 36.6 and 36.7

[bk78]

It is quite possible to measure temperatures to better than 0.1°C accuracy.

Have you ever measure your body's temperature?
The normal body's temperature 36.6 deg Celsius. And very conventional even Chinese thermometer measures the difference between 36.6 and 36.7

1. A body thermometer usually have good accuracy, but only over a very small range.
2. I repeat it for you, too: this is not about measuring the RESOLUTION with ONE thermometer, but for the accuracy with TWO thermometers. I have a multichannel thermometer at my lab with several probes, and if I connect them all at the same piece of metal, the displayed temperatures vary over about 1C.
3. I do not doubt that it is, in principle, possible to measure with higher precision than 0.1C. But this does not happen unless you carefully select your instruments and calibrate them (Triple point of water + melting point of metals, or a reference instrument that has a order of magnitude higher accuracy). I doubt that this has happened here. I also recommend that you read which instruments were used for previous test and check out the accuracy given from the manufacturer. INCLUDING the accuracy for the probes themselfes. They are nowhere near 0.1C.

[sparkyy0007]

Because the primary circuit is supposedly a closed loop, this energy will not be lost. Instead, it would reduce the electricity consumption for heating.

If it's closed, the condensate should be received by some sort of a reservoir where the pump can pick up. The residual steam from the primary loop must condense before it can be pumped back into the reactor.
Where will this heat go?

It will heat the reservoir. The reactor then has the choice of either reducing electric heating (which would give more convincing results) or increasing pump flow.

You are confusing the primary with that of a pressurized water reactor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor
No boiling occurs in this type of primary and no condenser is used.
Rossi has admitted steam will be used in the primary so the secondary loop in the following is applicable.
http://www.nucleartourist.com/type/pwr.htm
This loop must have a cooler or overheating of the reservoir will prevent further condensation.

[parallel]

bk78
1. Rossi said it - several times.
2. Never seen an electric kettle fur up from hard water?
3. Rossi states the proof is sale of working units. He is not interested in taming the critics. I doubt that is possible myself.
4. His demo was not to please critics. He is trying to sell a 1 MW plant.

Most of the posters here appear to be computer jocks or at least lack field experience. The choice of the heat exchanger is probably on price. Remember he had to sell his house to fund the home straight for the 1 MW plant. If he could adapt an existing heat exchanger he probably would.
This is not like working on gold plated government projects.

Edit added.
I have just seen your later post. What you do if you are trying to measure a small temperature difference is calibrate the thermocouples together in a liquid at near the desired temperature. And then check after the measurement to see if they have drifted. If you don't know something so elementary there is no point in further discussion.

[Joseph Chikva]

1. A body thermometer usually have good accuracy, but only over a very small range.
2. I repeat it for you, too: this is not about measuring the RESOLUTION with ONE thermometer, but for the accuracy with TWO thermometers. I have a multichannel thermometer at my lab with several probes, and if I connect them all at the same piece of metal, the displayed temperatures vary over about 1C.
3. I do not doubt that it is, in principle, possible to measure with higher precision than 0.1C. But this does not happen unless you carefully select your instruments and calibrate them (Triple point of water + melting point of metals, or a reference instrument that has a order of magnitude higher accuracy). I doubt that this has happened here. I also recommend that you read which instruments were used for previous test and check out the accuracy given from the manufacturer. INCLUDING the accuracy for the probes themselfes. They are nowhere near 0.1C.

Let they measure even with 1 deg and not 0.1 deg accuracy. But 0.1 also absolutely not a problem.
Body thermometer measures at a very small range but that is accurate enough and does not require calibration. But there are another types with bigger range.
I think that till now they had another and much bigger problem - there was not heat required to be measured.

PS: I have seen previous test and did not check the accuracy. And there was not problem in accuracy. They did measure nothing. Even with bad accuracy. As bad accuracy will not give you error of order of magnitude but bad conducted experiment will.

[sparkyy0007]

A little off topic but discussing minuscule differential temperature measurements, years ago I designed a differential temp instrument for my hang glider for locating and centering on thermals. If you can find the thermals, you get to stay up longer and go farther on cross country flights.
It consisted of a simple 1N914 diode biased to a few uA on the tip of each wing. The instrument was little more than an op amp to drive a zero center meter mounted to the base-tube of the glider. The meter would point to the wing with the warmest air under it and you turn, worked like a dam. The +-1/2 scale was 0.01 C .

[sparkyy0007]

http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@es ... 52029.html

Interesting thread, I hope they take Jed's advice and finally lay this to rest.
Will he be able to teach "grandma to suck eggs.."

[stefanbanev]

A little off topic but discussing minuscule differential temperature measurements, years ago I designed a differential temp instrument for my hang glider for locating and centering on thermals. If you can find the thermals, you get to stay up longer and go farther on cross country flights.
It consisted of a simple 1N914 diode biased to a few uA on the tip of each wing. The instrument was little more than an op amp to drive a zero center meter mounted to the base-tube of the glider. The meter would point to the wing with the warmest air under it and you turn, worked like a dam. The +-1/2 scale was 0.01 C .

I'm curious, did it actually help you to stay up longer? Did you consider a direct observation via infrared visor to locate a hot spots on the ground? Sorry for off topic, yet it is about dT though...

[sparkyy0007]

A little off topic but discussing minuscule differential temperature measurements, years ago I designed a differential temp instrument for my hang glider for locating and centering on thermals. If you can find the thermals, you get to stay up longer and go farther on cross country flights.
It consisted of a simple 1N914 diode biased to a few uA on the tip of each wing. The instrument was little more than an op amp to drive a zero center meter mounted to the base-tube of the glider. The meter would point to the wing with the warmest air under it and you turn, worked like a dam. The +-1/2 scale was 0.01 C .

I'm curious, did it actually help you to stay up longer? Did you consider a direct observation via infrared visor to locate a hot spots on the ground? Sorry for off topic, yet it is about dT though...

If you can center a thermal you can ride it right up to cloudbase and head to the next cloud and yes it worked great for locating them. A thermal if you could actually see it, would look like an enormous smoke ring, the problem is getting into the center without going over the falls, (kicked out). We do look for hot dirt fields or rock faces in the mountains, but good cross country flying usually means flying in fairly strong wind and that moves the thermals away from their source so unfortunately IR goggles for hot spots won't help. It would be great if warm air radiated but one of the guys once said "if you could see the warm air currents, you probably wouldn't want to fly again".
Do you fly?

[DancingFool]

1. I agree. Which immediately brings me to the next point. Could you tell me, from engineer to engineer, why Rossi is controlling this machine with a heater instead of a pump? The latter would boost the COP to a factor of 100 at least. He could install a small generator, buffered with a car battery (for security reasons, you know...), and pull the plug. This would make any discussion about steam quality pointless - as long as something hot is coming out for a while, there must be something to it. It also would be more valuable in practical terms, because it does not consume expensive electricity (and a grid connection).

I am, of course, entirely in the "Rossi is a big fat fraud" camp, but I've got to say that Rossi's insistance that the Ecat be run as a power amplifier is the one thing that makes sense.

As long as the unit is run with a relatiively low COP, emergency shutoff is fairly straightforward - you just shut off the heater. This assumes no complications from thermal inertia in the reactor (and I'm not at all certain that that's a reasonable assumption), but at least it makes superficial sense.

Running the unit as a standalone generator raises the obvious question of how you would turn it off, and how to avoid thermal runaway. Although the answer to that is fairly obvious (increase coolant flow, and in extremis vent hydrogen) any consideration of the subject raises the quite fundamental concern of why there is no temperature sensor on the reactor. I mean, talk about boneheaded incompetence. Unless he's just a lying weasel who doesn't want anyone to realise that the reactor doesn't get as hot as he says it must. Take your pick.

[stefanbanev]

A little off topic but discussing minuscule differential temperature measurements, years ago I designed a differential temp instrument for my hang glider for locating and centering on thermals. If you can find the thermals, you get to stay up longer and go farther on cross country flights.
It consisted of a simple 1N914 diode biased to a few uA on the tip of each wing. The instrument was little more than an op amp to drive a zero center meter mounted to the base-tube of the glider. The meter would point to the wing with the warmest air under it and you turn, worked like a dam. The +-1/2 scale was 0.01 C .

I'm curious, did it actually help you to stay up longer? Did you consider a direct observation via infrared visor to locate a hot spots on the ground? Sorry for off topic, yet it is about dT though...

If you can center a thermal you can ride it right up to cloudbase and head to the next cloud and yes it worked great for locating them. A thermal if you could actually see it, would look like an enormous smoke ring, the problem is getting into the center without going over the falls, (kicked out). We do look for hot dirt fields or rock faces in the mountains, but good cross country flying usually means flying in fairly strong wind and that moves the thermals away from their source so unfortunately IR goggles for hot spots won't help. It would be great if warm air radiated but one of the guys once said "if you could see the warm air currents, you probably wouldn't want to fly again".
Do you fly?

I'm a beginner in paragliding, love this fun... thanks for info. Anyway once LENR will become a reality in 10...20 years the increase by x100 of thermal energy per capita will provide a lot of lifting power ;o) Plus human population will skyrocket so only sky will be not too crowded...