A Handy Guide for Replicators, Inventors, Nay-Sayers and Theorists
This report was originally written to present a realistic model of inside the (Lugano) E-Cat, in order to correct some much repeated misapprehensions regarding the feasibility of heat transfer inside the E-Cat
A THERMODYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF THE LUGANO E-CAT
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A Handy Guide for Replicators, Inventors, Nay-Sayers and Theorists
This report was originally written to present a realistic model of inside the (Lugano) E-Cat, in order to correct some much repeated misapprehensions regarding the feasibility of heat transfer inside the E-CatHere was my reaction to this paper, slightly modified from what I wrote on ecatnews.com:
Why did the esteemed professors not use and report the temperature from thermocouples inside the reactor and on the reactor surface?
Why they did not calibrate the Optris for the exact conditions of the experiment, using the electrical heater built into the tube furnace Rossi made?
And please don’t cite Rossi’s claim, written semi incoherently, that the high temperature during a full range calibration would hurt the heater. If that’s true, why is it OK if the same temperature is reached by a reaction rather than Joule heat? What’s the difference?
Theory is nice but if you have your hands on the device, careful and thoughtful measurement is much better.
In other words, I don’t care what the emissivity really was. I think the whole messy experiment was bogus because the temperatures could have been measured directly with thermocouples or RTD's and in the alternative, the calibration of the Optris could have been done over the entire operating temperature range of the “reactor” with the built in heater. Either process and certainly both, would have rendered the argument about the emissivity of the alumina entirely moot. Rossi wanted equivocation, not accuracy. That has ALWAYS been his style since all his early experiments were completely uncalibrated and unblanked (despite vociferous objections from critics) and the later ones always featured some mismeasurement or lack of measurement or misplacement of thermocouples which allowed wiggle room for the results he claimed.
As for the merits of the work, I'd like to hear from Thomas Clarke if he's willing to plow through all of it. I'm not going to try because it isn't needed or helpful, IMHO.
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lots of completely off-topic things
I am happy to answer relevant questions, or take relevant comments, from sane individuals who have actually read what I wrote.
The report is just an attempt to understand the E-Cat in my own limited way: Whether it is truly an 'impossible invention', or fundamentally realistic according to engineering theory.
This report was published mainly to correct many misunderstandings of thermodynamics found on a 'skeptics' forum mentioned above. The soil mechanics bit was added because in his theory paper, Rossi suggests all the lithium vapourises, I disagree.
I am entertained by the E-Cat story, so please take this report in the spirit it's intended, and anyone who makes it past page4 may realise it's not a 100% serious work. Saying that, parts of it are, and I stand by all the calculations, conclusions and guesswork, and I hope it is useful in some small way to replicators.
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Yah, well, the only heat transfer inside the ecat originates with the heater. That applies to all ecats. And the Optris is not the correct method for characterizing the device that Rossi persuaded the professors to "test". Good luck to replicators (I mean that last part sincerely). I hope I missed something along the way but I seriously doubt it.
ETA since reading Slad's remarks on ecatnews.com: True, I didn't read your paper. I skimmed it to get the drift of the content. You're right, commenting on the contents from a quick browse wouldn't be fair but I DID NOT DO THAT! What I said or meant to say was that trying to recalibrate the Optris ex post facto was unlikely to yield a reliable result and VERY likely to yield endless arguments, which Rossi absolutely adores. I also described what the appropriate and helpful things to do would be or would have been.
I am glad you find the ecat story entertaining. Perhaps you also entertained by other scams which steal billions from people like Medicare scams, corporate embezzlement, Ponzi schemes, free energy scams, and the like. Oh yeah. Lots of fun to see hard working people lose their money and clever scam artists profit, as those who can stay out of jail often do, at least for a time.
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It does seem that Slad misses the likelihood that at least some of the metallic components (all the core is metallic, even hydrogen by some standards) have formed solutions ("intermetallics") with or within one another at such high temperature. Even if one or another of the metals is not melted, the other metals are very likely to dissolve easily to a depth of 2.5 micron. Why is that important? Every alloy is not only a solution, but almost universally the alloy will have properties differing from the constituents, the packing and shared electronics greatly influence strength, rigidity, melting point, electrical and thermal conductivity and even density. This is metallurgical chemistry 301, Inorganic Chem 301 etc. You cannot simply deduce much about the behavior of an alloy from its constituents. Alloys have many many divergent properties from their components. I should not even have to write this.
I would agree that the conductivities might be intermediate between the "ingredients". But, that the melting points remain, and that the components don't intercalate, well that is for deep modeling in metallurgy.
Admonishment accepted! I originally thought the rate of molecular substitution between the solid and liquid phase would be too slow to affect much, and I did not consider the temperatures involved would change the coefficient of diffusion so dramatically.
I stuck to looking at Lithium because of there's more available data. I considered sodium as a substitute for LiAl for the same reasons. I agree both phases would be a mixture of all three (or four) metals. Boiling point will be different, although I believe the thermal conductivities will be roughly similar to those stated in my model, (or at least good enough for the purposes of this work).
Slad
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I suggest we keep ecatnews discussions, on ecatnews.
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Please forgive my lack of metallurgy 301... But I was thinking about the boiling points of alloys: I understand the ideas of eutectic mixtures, but I've never seen an alloy phase diagram that goes much above the 100% liquid stage. What prevents an alloy from having two boiling points? Similar to distilling alcohol, for example.
Or... are there still two boiling points, but they both change?
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Wishfull thinking is a powerfull way to diverge from reality. Never ceases to amaze me, how so many people are willing to completely abandon reason.
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A Handy Guide for Replicators, Inventors, Nay-Sayers and Theorists
This report was originally written to present a realistic model of inside the (Lugano) E-Cat, in order to correct some much repeated misapprehensions regarding the feasibility of heat transfer inside the E-CatI'd be able to comment more on this if the referenced work, on which the main results depend, was quoted with URLs?
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Specifically, the URL for the MFMP work establishing temperature?
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Specifically, the URL for the MFMP work establishing temperature?
Begin with:
https://gsvit.wordpress.com/20…-by-means-of-ir-camera-2/
Other links there will hopefully meet your needs.
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Sorry - my reply seems to have been made to the wrong thread, as above!
Best wishes, Tom
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Possibly useful to this discussion:
https://gsvit.files.wordpress.…um-oxide-proprerties1.pdf
And yes, "proprerties1", while clearly a typo, will work as a link - providing some emissivity values.
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Please forgive my lack of metallurgy 301... But I was thinking about the boiling points of alloys: I understand the ideas of eutectic mixtures, but I've never seen an alloy phase diagram that goes much above the 100% liquid stage. What prevents an alloy from having two boiling points? Similar to distilling alcohol, for example.
Or... are there still two boiling points, but they both change?
I don't know this. I don't think existing metallurgy references are well developed in that area. Metal vapors in practice that I have read of are cesium, sodium, potassium and rubidium. And of course mercury. One can imagine indium and gallium in that context, i suspect, since they have relatively low melting points. I think the literal solution is to do some experiments. But I would like to investigate this further in the books (Slater and Hume-Rothery) and get back to you when I am not "in the woods" literally. So, please, I think your question is very interesting. Let me get back to you on it when I have more references to make sure that my thoughts are not too divergent from those in Slater and H-R (both actually recommended by Mitchell Swartz, by the way.
What I have done so far is develop a hand waving argument for high and low eutectic melts being either high or low boiling, and have some modest rationale for pieces of the arguments. I don't have my schema ready for wide public exposure, but essentially a high mp eutectic can easily be either a high or low boiler-- variables in my feeble case being relative atomic size (ratio of atomic radii) and Pauling electronegativity (Pauling e-) differential between the two species . A low melting eutectic is almost always a low boiler, but occasionally might go high depending on ionic-like or covalent like weak bonding which might give a tendency toward high temp co-distillation, that is because of the quasi-molecular behavior raises the effective mass and hence energy required to exceed the ambient gas pressure and escape freely from the surface (a.k.a. boiling). My tentative model is primitive with respect spin pairing effects. I do have some ideas on how tetrad and other weak multiplet associations would affect metallic vapor and boiling behaviors.
Anyway, thanks for the provocative question, Slad.
Longview
