Who would ever suspect that he would pay for his own fake power?
Everybody with a pension plan, that had an interest rate below inflation rate, payed his own interest rate... (And never forget the fees!)
It's the basic matra of the finance mafia...
E-Cat Plant Test Plan (Fabio Penon)
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The glaring omission
The test protocol measures heat generated assuming 100% phase change from liquid to dry steam and even ignores all other contributions.
The test equipment includes nothing that can measure the quality of the steam, nor any information about the piping with traps etc to ensure no liquid outflow.
This was standard for Rossi. The problem was known and widely discussed by the end of 2011. I certainly wrote a lot about it. The problem is even worse than some assume. Some will think that if the temperature of the steam is above a particular value, the steam must be dry. That value depends on pressure, but even if there is dry steam, there can be liquid water underneath it. Dry steam is hot enough that the water droplets will vaporize (which cools the steam; once enough heat is added and all the droplets are vaporized, that is dry steam.) However, heat does not transfer efficiently between steam and a mass of unevaporated water -- liquid, not floating droplets). It would be necessary to take measures to detect this, and Rossi never did it, Kullander and Essen completely missed this.Rossi always assumed total evaporation, without actually checking it.
It is necessary in the system design that there would be some elevated pressure in the steam outlet; this pressure will create a higher temperature for steam to be considered dry. If there is enough pressure, there might not be any actual steam at all, it might be all water.
If there is water below dry steam, the temperature in the water below will be lower than the temperature of the dry steam....
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I don't see that pressurization necessarily precludes gravity return. Of course it can depend on the specifics of the circuit. Please clarify that point, Thanks.
I mean a closed pressurized system like the primary loop in a nuclear reactor. Or like an old fashioned hot water radiator system in a multistory house. When you turn off the circulation pump in the radiator system, the water does not all fall back to the basement boiler. It sits there in the pipes, and the pipes are full. If air can get into the boiler system, the water will fall down (gravity return).With an old fashioned radiator, the pipes are not always full. If there are air bubbles, the water will not reach the upper floors of the house. You have to bleed out the air by turning a valve on the radiator, until hot water starts to spit out. I did this when I was growing up. Bubbles in pipes in nuclear reactors are big trouble.
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I think you have pointed to two, unrelated issues here. They sound related but they are not:
The external tank is connected with the internal tank, by a water line and a floating valve, so that the level of water inside the internal tank is maintained constant.
The "water line" means a tap; ordinary city water. [THEN AGAIN, MAYBE NOT. SEE BELOW.] This just means that when the water level in the external tank falls, it refills. This does not mean that the pipe from the customer site to the external tank is not gravity return. I think it must have been, because otherwise the people from I.H. would not have observed that the pipe was half empty.Keeping the tank full might be a way to keep the pipe full. It would function like a large U shaped pipe, putting back pressure back to the radiator in the fake customer site, I suppose. Why not just use an ordinary U? Eliminating this problem is easy. You need only a few dollars of extra pipes. You don't need an extra tank.
(As I said, I do not think this external and internal tank arrangement was used in the final configuration. I could be wrong about that. I do not understand the point of having two tanks.)
Hence I do not understand the flowmeter issue?? Or do you believe there is fraud involved?
Fraud or gross incompetence. The flow meter had two issues:1. It was the wrong kind. It was too insensitive, measuring minimum units of 1 m^3 of water. The measured rate was below the minimum shown on the faceplate.
2. The pipe was half empty, as I.H. discovered when they examined the pipe and the flow meter. The manual for this pipe says that the pipe has to be full. As far as I know, the only way it could be half empty is with a gravity return.
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A bit like life, really. For some of us the pipe is always half full, for others half empty.
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The external tank is connected with the internal tank, by a water line and a floating valve,
Ah, ha. Maybe a "water line" just means a pipe, from the external tank to the internal tank. I had the idea it meant city tap water, but maybe not.I do not understand the purpose of the float valve if this just means there is a pipe. Why not just have the water flow back to the internal tank whenever it goes above a drain hole on the side of the tank? Why do they interrupt it and then open the gravity return pipe periodically with the float valve?
For that matter, why collect in the external tank in the first place? As I said, I do not think this was the final configuration.
And:
"-temperature probe for measuring the cooling water temperature at the inlet of the shelter.
It is located in the internal water tank, containing cooling distilled water"From this I gather there is an internal tank, located somewhere in the Plant.
By "plant" I guess you mean in the shipping container. I guess the "external tank" is located outside the shipping container.It says this is distilled water, but surely when they first started up the reactor, it was ordinary tap water.
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@JedRothwell,
If the Test Plan wasn't followed in procedure or physical embodiment, it won't much use in sorting things out.By "Plant" I mean the reactor shelter/container. I have been avoiding calling it the 1MW Plant at least until I can see that it actually produced 1MW.
(I am almost hesitant to use the term "reactor shelter", at this point).Maybe this is the internal tank in the image? (arrow) Note the position of the Condensate pipe next to Rossi (label more clear in next image). The pipe turns and runs along the floor towards the white box thing (arrow). There is also a floor level pipe at the base of the Tigers (see e-cat.com photo of 24 pumps on end of Tigers rack, with absence of pipes coming into the wall on the Tiger end, but similar-looking floor level pipe wraps around Tigers.)
(P.S. I just noticed that in Ferrara the small modules are already in blue boxes also. See pages 14 and 15 of Indication of... )
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Quote from Abd
It is necessary in the system design that there would be some elevated pressure in the steam outlet; this pressure will create a higher temperature for steam to be considered dry. If there is enough pressure, there might not be any actual steam at all, it might be all water.If there is water below dry steam, the temperature in the water below will be lower than the temperature of the dry steam....
I've left off much analysis of this system because there are too many things left out. I'm inclined to be cautious and not assume "the right thing done" where nothing is specified. In the case of Rossi at least such caution is well justified.
The "inlet" temperature is measured in this internal water tank. But it is very possible for the recirculating water to be at a much higher temperature than that in the tank, depending on what the pipe to tank connections are. Penon is in any case ignoring the enthalpy from deltaT in water as requested by Rossi in a PR masterpiece that conveniently hides system details. If he did not ignore it we do not (as far as I know) have any information about what it is claimed to be. But more - if it were claimed to be significant (say the rumoured by Rossi 60C inlet which would alone at quoted flow-rate give a definitely working system) - this would not be valid without surity that the internal water tank was thermally well mixed with the circulating water - there is no other inlet temperature measurement. Making the internal water tank have a fixed water level (which appears to be what the Penon report says) is a bit weird and not understood by me. But could be fine, or could be sinister. or maybe it is misstated and it is the external tank with floating valve and regulated water level, gravity-feeding a full internal tank. That would make much more sense.
Also interesting is the note that the 115 e-cats each have electrical input in range 1.1-2.5kW, and 5 are spares (numbers approx since I forget exact). This means that when operating the input power would be 100-250kW. We know there is this quoted 20kW input power. So it looks like (and this is what Rossi claims) the stuff is switched off most of the time.
All of this makes knowing how it was done impossible., there are just too many potential ways to rig this system. I doubt more than one or two are relevant, but cannot say which without detailed information. Perhaps IH have this. Or perhaps not.
- Flowmeter spoofing
- Output temp measurement wrong from bad TC siting
- Input temp wrong (real issue, but irrelevant since Rossi counts only the enthalpy of vaporisation)
- Two phase output where hot steam and colder water both flow through output circuit, steam temperature measured at point where no equilibrium has been reached.
- Measurement spoofing where system is off most of time and critical measurements only taken when system is on
Perhaps a few others I have not considered... -
It says this is distilled water, but surely when they first started up the reactor, it was ordinary tap water.
No, bad idea. They would use distilled water, only, to avoid issues with dissolved solids, which means there is no water feed from the city water. All the dissolved solids would end up in the boilers. The only loss of water will be from leakage of water or steam or evaporation from the external tank if open to the air, which I suspect it was. So the level in the external tank is observed, and when it goes below a certain level, distilled water would be added. That's simple and clear, at least the concept is.
It has been suggested that there was no measurement of the "fluid" as required by the formal agreement protocol. Actually, that is what the flow meter does, if properly installed. At that point steam has been entirely condensed, so water passing that point is water that was sent from the boilers, under a basic assumption: nothing added or lost in the "customer area."As long as the water level in the internal tank is higher than that in the external tank, the float valve will be closed, but during system operation, not tightly; the internal level will be such to loosely close the float valve, allowing the trickle of water to enter the internal tank. This maintains unidirectional flow of water, internal pressure variations will not sufficiently force water back against that trickle through a small opening. It will just vary the flow rate a bit. The measurement of power does not need to consider instantaneous flow rate inside the plant. The flow meter will measure the volume of liquid water being sent out through the system.
The temperature of that water is somewhat relevant, but not greatly so. For an engineering purpose, one would not want "conservative" measurements, but accurate ones. That was a clue that this was being set up as a GPT, because, then, ignoring that information could be seen as "generous." This is all about appearances, not engineering.
If such allowances are to be made, they would be explicit, based on the best information.
Up against the float valve, the water is at the lowest point in the external loop. That pipe may fill, depending on details. If the external tank is open and return pipe is not submerged, the whole pipe leading to the internal tank would fill, I'd think, but not back further from that. Unless the flow rate were high, which it was not, the return pipe would not fill. A full pipe would require pressure and this would create a high flow rate at the end of the pipe, water would not be dripping from that pipe, it would be flowing with enough pressure to keep air from flowing back above the water. From the pipe diameter, one could estimate the necessary flow rate.
Those claiming that the pipe was full have, so far, not looked at this. They are blowing smoke, not evidence.
I am not claiming any specific artifact, but pointing to possible artifacts, which is normal and necessary skepticism. I am pointing to the possibility of manipulation of flow because of the hidden customer area. There are many such possibilities; back in 2011, perhaps Jed will remember that I wrote that humans are endlessly inventive and could fake a "demonstration" to fool even the best experts, if the demonstrator has full control or even, perhaps, partial control. This is precisely why fully-independent confirmations are needed in science. Science routinely assumes that authors don't lie. But then it verifies independently, thus covering the possibility beyond anything but an extensive conspiracy.
In this case, the "Rossi Effect," there is no true independent verification, beyond very little, inadequate in the face of a truly extraordinary claim. Pseudoskeptics will note this andclaim it is proof of fraud or serious delusion. Genuine skeptics will simply note it and not jump to conclusions from it, remaining "agnostic." One common Rossi claim is quite on-point and valid. He claims that the market is the ultimate judge.
It is. What is the judgment of the market, after five years of claim that he has a 1 MW reactor ready for sale for $1.5 million?
Obviously, that judgment could flip at some point, if he has a real product, where a real customer actually measures power and is then satisfied and pays for it. This is why the allegation that JM Products was not a real customer is so important.
Rossi v. Darden faces, from the evidence we have seen, two huge obstacles. The first is to establish that there was consent to a GPT, and not merely a measurement of power. There probably was no consent to GPT, only to measurement. That is certainly the IH claim! A jury could decide estoppel, that is a factual judgment, but given what we have seen, it appears entirely unlikely. Again, a Rossi Rabbit might appear at any time.
The second obstacle is that the GPT was badly flawed in ways that were, compared to the original plan, unconscionable, and it is quite visible that these flaws were deliberately created by Rossi by how he set up Doral. The sum and essence of it was that Rossi was in full control of the test, and the "ERV" was only a loose supervisor. In theory, IH had two "representatives" there, but their assigned task was to assist Rossi, who was formally in charge of plant operation. Fabiani was contracted to "spy" (though I'm sure that was open; i.e., he was to report operational fact to IH). Barry West was there, but we do not know how much he knew, he was handy with a soldering iron. He is one person that may be available to testify to various facts, such as visible "customer" activity. Fabiani, in the end, stonewalled IH, it appears, and cannot, then, be trusted to be independent, exposing as misleading Planet Rossi claims that, roughly, IH had "two representatives there at all times, therefore the exclusion of Murray was of no consequence."
It has all become relatively transparent, from what IH has presented so far. Again, any day now, a Rossi Rabbit may appear. Let's call it the Wabbit, just because it's a fun name, from Bugs Bunny. I'm watching for that Wabbit. The glimpse we just got of Rossi interrogatories leads me to suspect that there is no Wabbit. What you see is what we got.
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I very much doubt that they used distilled water, there are numerous water treatment systems available for feed-water, either 'one-shot' added to the boilers before filling and topped up via the condensate return, or 'in-line' systems rather like a domestic water softener. I have rubbed up against many dozens of steam boilers over the years (not always as pleasurable as you might imagine) and every single one used water from the public supply. Even 'total loss' systems like those used in some industries which get through thousands of gallons of feedwater every week use town water, unless there is a handy lake nearby. And even lake-water is always treated before use. A recirculating system as in Doral would need only a splash of feedwater now and then, so 'one shot' feedwater additives would work fine.
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I very much doubt that they used distilled water, there are numerous water treatment systems available for feed-water, either 'one-shot' added to the boilers before filling and topped up via the condensate return, or 'in-line' systems rather like a domestic water softener. I have rubbed up against many dozens of steam boilers over the years (not always as pleasurable as you might imagine) and every single one used water from the public supply. Even 'total loss' systems like those used in some industries which get through thousands of gallons of feedwater every week use town water, unless there is a handy lake nearby. And even lake-water is always treated before use. A recirculating system as in Doral would need only a splash of feedwater now and then, so 'one shot' feedwater additives would work fine.
And the effect of those additives on the boiling point of the water, which is important to the measurements? Penon specified distilled water. Is there any reason to doubt this?I have a heating system in my Massachusetts apartment that is a basement steam boiler with radiators in rooms. Standard. Water feed is from the public water supply, I have to check the boiler every so often and top it off with a feed valve. So Alan is correct about that issue, it seems. But nobody is measuring power output, so this is quite a different situation.
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No, bad idea. They would use distilled water, only, to avoid issues with dissolved solids, which means there is no water feed from the city water.
The water was reportedly filthy. It left silt and rust on the flowmeter and in the pipe, which showed that the pipe was half empty.All the dissolved solids would end up in the boilers.
And so they did.The only loss of water will be from leakage of water or steam or evaporation from the external tank if open to the air, which I suspect it was.
I am sure it was open to the air. A gravity flow return would not work otherwise.Penon specified distilled water. Is there any reason to doubt this?
Yes there are reasons:That would be very expensive. As noted you can achieve almost the same quality with filters and water treatment.
The water was reportedly filthy, although I suppose it might have gotten that way over time.
It was warm water in contact with air which means it would soon have bacteria, fungus and so on. There is really no point to starting with distilled water. You need constant cleaning and filtering, if you want to keep it clean.
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If the Test Plan wasn't followed in procedure or physical embodiment, it won't much use in sorting things out.
I think it was not followed. That is what I.H. said in their motion to dismiss.This description is not much use in sorting things out. I think it does make some things clear, more in their absence than presence. There is no mention of steam quality, and no discussion of instruments or procedures such as sparging used to check for it. This is a key issue. If they do not even mention it I suppose that means they did not do it.
Maybe this is the internal tank in the image? (arrow) Note the position of the Condensate pipe next to Rossi (label more clear in next image).
I think the tank (or tanks) are large plastic white boxes shown in the photos at Ecat World. They are translucent. They do not look airtight to me, which along with the claim of a gravity return is another reason why I suppose they are not airtight. I am just going with what Penon and Rossi claim here.Here is the photo of a tank that I referred to, at Ecat World. This could be in Italy, but I gather they brought everything to Florida:
I posted a message over there at e-cat world pointing out they did not measure steam quality, but those charming people did not approve of my message.
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The plan required distilled water. However, I would not doubt that they did not follow the plan in this point or many others.
In short I don't trust that the plan was not followed until there is proof that it was. -
@JedRothwell,
I put that photo there.If you have a suggestion as to how that pipe with the meter in the photo even does anything, let me know.
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I put that photo there.
Thanks! Is that in Italy or the U.S.? Do you know when it was taken?If you have a suggestion as to how that pipe with the meter in the photo even does anything, let me know.
No idea.I suppose you were the one who wrote "Water Meter FAIL" in the photo.
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@JedRothwell,
Yes, I am responsible for the pink ink.
Although, the GSVIT article alerted me to it, long ago.
I disagree with the article about the Tellarini pump being in the "bucket", however, unless it was completely removed (and the bucket just to catch drips). You can't immerse that type of pump. The pump was supposed to be inside the shelter anyways.If the white tank end of the pipe was immersed in the white tank, it could easily siphon from the tank into the blue bucket if any flow was going that way.
The white tank is clearly open on the top, in other photos from the same date.
Edit: The water meter pipe was important enough to cut a hole in a steel lid for it, so it should be part of the plan, not a temporary item. So I guess it is from the pump, which has been unbolted in the photo.
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The "inlet" temperature is measured in this internal water tank. But it is very possible for the recirculating water to be at a much higher temperature than that in the tank, depending on what the pipe to tank connections are. Penon is in any case ignoring the enthalpy from deltaT in water as requested by Rossi in a PR masterpiece that conveniently hides system details.
Yeah, that is what I thought when I read that on Mats Lewan's blog. Rossi creates these appearances all the time. It looks "conservative," but it conceals fact. This is not what I would want to see in an expert engineer evaluation, I would want to see the most accurate possible estimate of power, then explicit margins to make a conclusion conservative. Not built-in imprecision!What if, after all, the inlet water is actually part water and part steam!
If this were a GPT, it would have been set up very differently in many ways. However, this sloppiness is more or less what Rossi and Penon did with the Validation Test, which IH accepted at the time, or appeared to. After all, they paid the $10 million for the IP which was conditional on that test. In fact, I suspect, they put clothes pins on their noses, that is rather obvious from the evidence we have about the Validation Test.
All of this makes knowing how it was done impossible., there are just too many potential ways to rig this system. I doubt more than one or two are relevant, but cannot say which without detailed information.
The core problem was Rossi control. There are a million ways to fake test performance. Very few could survive independent testing.
This is actually basic scientific process. For extraordinary claims or claims where conflict of interest may have affected an original claimant, independent confirmation is generally required, and the more extraordinary the claim, the more confirmation is required. Major harmful results have arisen when this has been ignored.
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It looks "conservative," but it conceals fact. This is not what I would want to see in an expert engineer evaluation, I would want to see the most accurate possible estimate of power, then explicit margins to make a conclusion conservative. Not built-in imprecision!
Another example of this is that they arbitrarily reduced the flow rate by 10%. -
Ah, ha. I read this again, and I think I understand it better. Here is what Penon says, with comments by me in square brackets, in red, to boot:
The cooling water is contained in a tank, placed inside the plant, that receives the water from an external plant. [Not sure what an "external plant" is. I think it means the external tank.]
It is conveyed by pumps in the units E-Cat, where it is heated to vaporize. The steam is collected in one tube of the steam line, which conveys it to the outside of the shelter. [Steam "line" means a pipe with steam in it. Line = pipe. "Shelter" means the shipping container.]
The steam is then passed through the customer's facility, where it cools up to its condensation. [This means "cools and condenses."]
The water is so recycled to the internal tank in a closed loop. The water is distilled water. [So the water goes back directly from customer site to the internal tank, where it started. This does not say it is a gravity return, but I think it must be, because IH found evidence that this pipe was half full.]
The external tank is connected with the internal tank, by a water line [pipe] and a floating valve, so that the level of water inside the internal tank is maintained constant. The water flows from the external tank into the internal tank by gravity. [This is another tank, outside the loop. When the water level in the internal tank falls because of evaporation or leaks, it is replenished from the external tank. Water flows from the external tank into the internal tank by gravity feed, under the control of the float valve.]
Elsewhere it says that the flowmeter is installed in the pipe between the customer site and the internal tank. I think that is what this means:
QuoteIn the plant some measuring instruments are installed:
ー flowmeter for measuring the flow rate of cooling water inlet into the shelter. It is located along the line of return of the water, between the plant of the Customer and the 1 MW E-Cat
The condensed water is not flowing from the customer site back into the "external tank." That is what I imagined when I first read this.This explains what the external tank is for. It is there to replenish the internal tank as needed. It is not part of the loop from tank, to reactor, to customer site condenser, back to the tank.
