E-Cat X Makes Gas-Powered E-Cat ‘Obsolete’

Actually we've been over the input heat aspect indeed and it isn't such an inconvenient aspect.

@lenr calendar

Indeed no. These devices get hot because of the input heat. It is then a matter of how you spoof (or just miscalculate) the measurement to make the output look more than the input.

At least that is what we know happened with the Lugano hot-cat. You think it is a one-off?

Quote from LENR Calender

Actually we've been over the input heat aspect indeed and it isn't such an inconvenient aspect.

It's been covered in some detail:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/283…g-Two-Chiefs-World-System

https://drive.google.com/file/…BTbVQ0VXBabWtv/view?pli=1

The Arrhenius relationship is strong, and essentialy tells you what is the activation energy for a reaction where thermal energy overcomes the barrier to the reaction.

For fusion, the activation energies are incredibly high. There is no way that the difference between 10C and 100C could be significant compared to the 10s of KeV required.

However, because no-one has a credible mechanism for overcoming this activation energy Axil is free to fit his ideas to whatever features he wants, including the possibility of an exponential dependence of reaction rate on temperature at some activation energy typical of chemical reactions. You can do anything on paper if you try hard enough and ignore numbers.

I think the Lugano test has a lot to answer for with its "acceleration". This is absolutely an artifact. We know from that test that once compensated the COPs at 1250C and 1400C are very similar (to within 0.5%).

Why is it that so many different LENR experiments seem to require high temperatures to work? I'd say because the power errors scale proportional to the power in, which increases for higher temperatures. You can imagine systems with high temperature and very small power in. They do not seem to figure in LENR experiments.

MY: "cooling" water can be "temperature control" water. In that sense heating it could make sense, though be incredibly inefficient and not what anyone in their right minds would do. However, I'll agree with you that none of Rossi's demos make sense except as PR.

Best wishes, Tom

The Slad paper.

(1)

The hypothesis that LENR reaction rates depend on diffusion and so have linear temp dependence is OK. It has a glaring defect - why don't they happen at room temperature (which after all is itself a high temperature). Slad and others saying this need to propose some arbitrary and not understood cutoff which just coincidentally happens to be between room temperature and the higher operating temperatures used.

This alone would have my BS detector in overdrive.

Worse, look at the graph in Slad's paper. Diffusion can only give dependence proportional to temperature in Kelvin (and similarly many other mechanisms). there is instead a linear graph proportional (roughly) to temperature above room temperature. That has no plausible relationship to any reaction, but is exactly what you'd expect from calorimetry errors with a base from room temperature plus heat from a pump (or maybe just a hot room).

(2)

The idea that the best way to control a linear with temperature exothermic reaction is variable input heat.

This is ludicrous. You have a very limited range of adjustment - if you have COP = N then you can accommodate at most 1/N variation in reaction rate due to random factors. Ridiculous and something no-one would accept. LENR is clearly (if it exists) variable and so to make it safe you need a control system that could stabilise temperature over a wide range of powers. That is an output side (cooling) system. It is easy to make such systems which are highly effective and temperature controlled. They can easily stabilise power variations of 10X in the reaction rate.

(3)

Whereas if you don't have LENR but want to make it look as though you have, you need a high power input to give scope for the many possible measurement anomalies that can reduce measured input power or increase measured output power.

And for those thinking these requires deliberate deception - it does not. Just somone with sloppy practice who keeps trying different things looking for the elusive LENR reaction to come alive. Then it needs somone unwilling to look critically at their own practice, and unwilling to accept suggestions others make to tighten up protocols. That is Rossi to the tee.

(4)

You do need some way maybe to heat your stuff up to get it started, under the assumption of the hypothesised unconvincing but convenient cut-off to linear temperature dependence. But once started you do not use it any more, and have infinite COP. The power required can be quite small because your cooling system is off till the temperature reaches operating point.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

For fusion, the activation energies are incredibly high. There is no way that the difference between 10C and 100C could be significant compared to the 10s of KeV required... However, because no-one has a credible mechanism for overcoming this activation energy <the authour?> is free to fit his ideas to whatever features he wants

I think it's a strange practice to fit ideas about plasma physics / collision fusion models into talking about LENR. It's clearly a MDOF many-body problem, with plenty of opportunities for emergent properties to arise. An example of one of these properties, is the Debye temperature.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

The Slad paper... The hypothesis that LENR reaction rates depend on diffusion and so have linear temp dependence is OK. It has a glaring defect - why don't they happen at room temperature (which after all is itself a high temperature). Slad and others saying this need to propose some arbitrary and not understood cutoff which just coincidentally happens to be between room temperature and the higher operating temperatures used.

Yep, the Debye temperature: It's right there at the bottom of page 2. https://www.scribd.com/doc/283…g-Two-Chiefs-World-System

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Worse, look at the graph in Slad's paper. Diffusion can only give dependence proportional to temperature in Kelvin (and similarly many other mechanisms). there is instead a linear graph proportional (roughly) to temperature above room temperature.

Ummm.. Debye temperature?? And you appeared to agree before that the 'linear' bit is not a completely crazy idea.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

You do need some way maybe to heat your stuff up to get it started, under the assumption of the hypothesised unconvincing but convenient cut-off to linear temperature dependence.

Nice way to build an entire argument around a red herring. I don't think the Debye temperature is an "unconvincing" thing to toss in there... It tells us the temperature at which peak phonon (lattice) pressure stops occuring only at the outside face of the metal lattice, and starts sweeping periodically throughout the entire crystal structure.

The idea of the Debye temperature being some kind of ignition point comes from two of Piantelli's patents. It should also be noted that in the Storms paper that I reference, he first sees a noticeable excess heat signal at about 30C above the Debye temperature of Pd. Interestingly, this is just slightly above room temperature.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

The idea that the best way to control a linear with temperature exothermic reaction is variable input heat...
This is ludicrous. You have a very limited range of adjustment - if you have COP = N then you can accommodate at most 1/N variation in reaction rate due to random factors.

I agree up to a point. What you say is obviously correct, if you consider the reactor as a steady-state device. A COP of around 8-10 is probably a reasonable limit, for the reasons you suggest.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

LENR is clearly (if it exists) variable and so to make it safe you need a control system that could stabilise temperature over a wide range of powers. That is an output side (cooling) system. It is easy to make such systems which are highly effective and temperature controlled. They can easily stabilise power variations of 10X in the reaction rate.

There are few benefits, and several problems, offered by the type of system you propose:

1. To allow stable and efficient heat transfer, the reactor must have some sort of thermal resistance between the fuel and the cooling water (The Leidenfrost effect is an extreme example of why this is). This buffer will also have a thermal capacitance.

2. High thermal capacitance is a good thing, with controlled heating, if you consider the heat flow in the time-domain, it becomes apparent that in some cases ** including those with an exponential fuel-power curve ** the COP can be increased beyond 8-10 by causing the fuel to oscillate between two temperatures*. Essentially you are letting the fuel heat itself up, before the rate of heat transfer rises enough to cool it. Tight control is needed. These ideas are discussed with Dave Roberson in more detail here: https://disqus.com/home/discus…enwin/#comment-2318439426

3. In your case, you are trying to control fuel temperature, but your control input is on the wrong side of the thermal capacitance. This is refered to in my comment about "reset-time" on page 5 of my report. The reality is you would have to dramatically slow down the response of your pump, in order to stop it fluctuating wildly between on and off states. It is also possible you could decrease the pumps responsiveness so much, it would be unable to control a fuel with a 'peaky' power curve. Or even any fuel at high COPs.

4. I agree that some form of negative feedback in the cooling system is of great benefit. Fortunately, we don't need your proposed metered cooling system for this to happen: Water already has this property. Basically it's heat transfer coefficient significantly increases proportionally to its rate of boiling (up to a critical temperature). This effect is driven by different bubble formation regimes appearing, the differences between which can no doubt be heard by a stethoscope...

5. With a metered cooling system, as you propose, where does the increased amount of 'returned' hot water go? It's a waste to pour it down the drain, and it can't easily be fed back into the cold water input. One solution is an additional heat exchanger, and drain it (although this still would present some problems), the other solution is a closed-loop primary cooling circuit, more akin to a nuclear power plant, which would require both an additional heat exchanger and an additional pump.

6. This isn't some large nuclear power plant. It's distributed power. Installations need to be as simple as possible, both to keep down manufacturing costs, and reduce maintenance hours.

7. Metered cooling treats the whole heat exchange surface as a single element, with controlled heating, separate bands can be heated independently, to smooth the power delivery or temperature, at all points along the path of water flow.

* As you say, this would perhaps involve finding a stable region of the operating envelope where fluctuations due to "random factors" are not a problem

Quote from Mary Yugo

I have no idea who Slad is but obviously he knows nothing about control systems and heat transfer. He does know how to generate pretty curves and equations though. Maybe he's an artist?

I am a retired medical doctor from Sandy-Eggo*. In the sixties I measured the thermal resistance of a wet-suit, using a simple formula. In the seventies I put a baby in a calorimeter. These two achievements make me (in my eyes) a "world class expert in calorimetry", and by extension, an expert in control and heat transfer too.

Oh wait... that was just a bad dream. I used to work as an engineer at a defence company, I now work in an unrelated niche field, probably best described (in part) as the 'optimisation of highly-efficient thermodynamic systems'. I drew that graph using AutoCAD. I'm glad you liked it. However, you should consult a dictionary regarding the definition of the word "curve".

Quote from Mary Yugo

No they are not. They are based on the simple and straightforward proposition that if the reactor makes 4x to 6x the amount of heat energy required to run it, that heat can easily be extracted from the output via a heat exchanger and returned in a carefully controlled way to the input. Any heat now supplied to the device by the electric heater can be supplied from the output of the device without any electrical heater. With heat to spare.

On page 4 of my report, I politely request that you produce a block diagram of your proposed system, in order that I can evaluate it. Still struggling with this?

*

https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg62587.html

Well I learnt it from the best Mary Any bawdy language used is actually a direct quotation from yourself.

As a Doctor, I'm sure that you realise that when a person 'lacks insight' into their 'struggles', this is rarely cause for a celebration.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

This is ludicrous ...etcetera etcetera

Quote from Slad

A detailed reply involving Debye, room temperature effects, PIDs, capacitance, cooling pump rates...

Quote from Thomas Clarke

However, that won't stop me from saying what I think is true, defending those statements when they are challenged, or correcting myself and agreeing I've made a mistake (as we all do sometimes).