E-Cat Plant Test Plan (Fabio Penon)

    Quote from JedRothwell

    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.


    Nice work. I had the same imagination. Penon's language is obviously confused in places, and this can lead to other interpretive errors, even when he is not confused. I think you may be correct. I'm going to read it again.


    Okay, done. It is possible that the operating loop is closed (he calls the system a "closed loop") and that the return pipe, where the flow meter is located, could be full, the issue is much more complex than if this were simply gravity flow back to the external tank, with, then, gravity to the internal tank.


    With this description, the actual state of the return pipe is more difficult to anticipate. Is there air in the internal tank system? How does the pipe enter that tank, is it below the water level? The internal tank in what Paradigmnoia has shown is a large vertical pipe, apparently. The return pipe would theoretically enter below the water line, unless ....


    Unless the pump rate out exceeded the return rate. This could empty the internal tank, and air would then flow back into the return pipe, and that pipe could become only partially full. This would only be a transient state, but it would create a pipe with air in it, back to the flow meter. What happens then depends, again, on flow rate. A possible issue could also be a water loss in the customer area. This would cause a temporary lowering of the apparent flow rate, unless the flow meter is now malfunctioning because of not being full of water.


    If it is true that the meter was installed with no protective measures, such as a U-joint in the pipe to keep the meter unconditionally submerged (assuming no forced air to empty it), the system is vulnerable to artifact and that condition might even be set up by how the pump was operated, in addition to possible issues in the customer area.

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    The internal tank in what Paradigmnoia has shown is a large vertical pipe, apparently. The return pipe would theoretically enter below the water line, unless ....


    That is the external tank. It is outside the shipping container. Assuming this photo is from Florida, or this is the same configuration they used in Florida.


    I think it would be difficult to have the return pipe enter below the water line. I doubt you can have it go into the tank wall below the waterline. That kind of plastic material does not like to have holes cut and pipes attached. It leaks. Note that all the pipes in the photo go up and over, rather than through the wall.


    I guess the return pipe could go up, over and down, which would make the return pipe a large U -- which is what is needed. But I do not think that was the configuration. Mainly, I do not think so because I.H. found evidence that the pipe was usually half empty. You might say this is circular reasoning but I believe a gravity return is the only way it could end up this way.

    Let me reiterate something. There is no indication they tested steam quality. The configuration shows no instruments to test it, and the protocol lists no tests such as sparging. The data shows the pressure was 0 bar. This is impossible. I expect it was high enough to keep the water from vaporizing. That is, at least 3 psi (1.2 bar).


    I expect that if they had tested steam quality, they would have discovered there was no steam. This means enthalpy is overestimated. The temperature went from roughly 80°C to 103°C which takes 23 cal/g if it did not vaporize. If it vaporized it would take 560 cal/g. So this is probably wrong by a factor of 24. Rossi claimed output was 50 times input, but other tests showed there was no excess heat. So, there is probably an error measuring the flow rate by a factor of ~2. (2 * 24 equals approximately 50.)


    Measuring the flow rate incorrectly by a factor of 2 is not out of the question. The flow rate was measured wrong presumably because this was the wrong kind of flowmeter, the flow was below the minimum, and the pipe was half empty. I think such problems would be sufficient to cause an error on this scale.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
    The internal tank in what Paradigmnoia has shown is a large vertical pipe, apparently. The return pipe would theoretically enter below the water line, unless ....


    That is the external tank. It is outside the shipping container.


    No. You are not looking at the same photo. There is a very large vertical pipe with the label "Condensate" on it, inside the plant, at an end of a reactor row, shown in a photo that I recall from Paradigmnoia or his E-catworld account Obvious, yesterday or today. It does not look like a "tank" at all, but that label gives it away. A pipe conducting condensate would not rise all the way up!


    However, it's still mysterious. If water flows from an external tank through a float valve, by gravity, how is this arranged? Why would the internal tank be so tall? If it is gravity flow through a float valve, the external tank must have a water level higher than that in the internal tank.

    Quote from Penon

    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.
    The steam is then passed through the customer's facility, where it cools up to its condensation. . . .


    As a copy editor and translator, I would not expect a venture capitalist to pay $89 million on the strength of a report written in this kind of prose. That may sound like a snark, but I am serious. People expect a higher level of professionalism for that kind of money. Mistakes such as "cools up to its condensation" are unacceptable.


    I speak a second language and I often make mistakes in it. That is no excuse. With millions of dollars are at stake and $10 million in his pocket Rossi could afford to hire someone to correct the English. If someone were paying me a lot of money to do a study and report the results in Japanese, I would make darn sure it was clearly written and fully grammatical Japanese.

    why a tall tank?


    My guess is that the heater and the thermocouple were at different ends and the water was taken by the system from the hot end of the tank.


    There does not seem to be any mixing in the tank.



    By the way, how much power would all those cat pumps pull. Their heat would eventually end up in the enclosure.


    And why if the system was called a closed loop, would there ever need to have a refill and a float valve.

    Let me clarify what I meant. Whether I am right or wrong is another thing...


    Discussing Doral:
    The internal tank, I think, is horizontal. It is fairly big, maybe roughly the size of a household hot water heater, turned on its side.
    There are at least two vertical pipes labelled "condensate" with a yellow label. There seems to be an arrow on as well. One of these, I think, it is followed around where it goes horizontal at floor level terminates on the LH side of the Tiger pumps in a vertical un-insulated pipe, which may be an air bleed or water hammer suppression pipe.


    Regarding the Validation in Ferrara is another arrangement, with the large water tank and an improperly installed water meter, (and connection pipe mysteries) that does not seem to match the Validation experiment protocol described in the (at least) two patent applications.


    So here are the photos:

    Quote from oldguy

    And why if the system was called a closed loop, would there ever need to have a refill and a float valve.


    I think it will need a refill from time to time because there will be evaporation, splashing, leaking and spills. It is hot water and those plastic containers do not look airtight to me. I do not think "closed loop" means hermetically closed, or pressurized. I think it just means the water goes around in a circle, from reactor to customer and back.


    Quote from oldguy

    By the way, how much power would all those cat pumps pull. Their heat would eventually end up in the enclosure.


    I think the whole kit and caboodle including the pumps draws ~20 kW.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Penon wrote:
    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.
    The steam is then passed through the customer's facility, where it cools up to its condensation. . . .


    As a copy editor and translator, I would not expect a venture capitalist to pay $89 million on the strength of a report written in this kind of prose. That may sound like a snark, but I am serious. People expect a higher level of professionalism for that kind of money. Mistakes such as "cools up to its condensation" are unacceptable.


    Well, I find the meaning clear. Sure, it's not colloquial. It is clear, however, why Penon was retained. Rossi wanted it and even demanded it for the Validation Test. It was either agree or say Goodbye, Andrea. Then the Doral installation was Rossi's baby. He was selling power to what appeared to be a willing customer. By that time the Plants were useless to IH, so why not let him use them? Maybe some good would come out of it. Rossi obviously wanted Penon to measure output, so IH agreed. The money for the Fabiani, West, and Penon was to come from JM Products, more than enough.


    The document we have is apparently a second draft of a test procedure. It was not bad enough to make me wanna scream, though, yes, for a General Performance Test, it would suck big time. For a series of reasons. But ... this wasn't a General Performance Test, this was a sale of power and a last attempt to see if Rossi could somehow manage to make it work. They did not expect to pay $89 million if it worked; rather, they would have then negotiated with Rossi for some way to complete the agreement, because if it really did work, it would be worth $89 million or more. It would almost certainly have been some variation on, "Great, Andrea, it worked! If we can test these devices ourselves, that we made, and see heat, even in one reactor at a time, we can raise that $89 million for sources available to us and waive the GPT. We'll need to raise more than that, but that is our problem, not yours. What a pleasure doing business with you!"


    But it did not happen that way. Rossi attempted to bully them into making the payment. I just read what Rossi said about all this around May 1. He drastically misrepresented what had happened, and what is really strange is that as more comes out, Planet Rossi is declaring, "See, he told the truth!" Actually, he said some things that were true, nobody with any knowledge contradicted them, but Planet Rossi misread the comments and now sees that the truth contradicts what they misunderstood. Rossi vindicated, they proclaim. I will cover some of this in another thread.


    Quote

    I speak a second language and I often make mistakes in it. That is no excuse. With millions of dollars are at stake and $10 million in his pocket Rossi could afford to hire someone to correct the English. If someone were paying me a lot of money to do a study and report the results in Japanese, I would make darn sure it was clearly written and fully grammatical Japanese.


    Rossi did not provide this document at the time. This was probably an email from Penon to Darden. Penon did not have $10 million in his pocket. There was no harm in the informality of this, in itself.


    And the IH position was probably, "Whatever." This was all what Rossi wanted, and they let him do it. There were two hints in the document about "GPT." One was that Penon called himself "ERV," and the other was that the test was 350 days. If one was sensitive to the idea of "GPT," that might have set off alarms. But either it was not read that way, or IH decided that they were adequately protected by the Second Amendment and it was not their business to rub Rossi's nose in that, while they still hoped he might perform on the Agreement to fully transfer IP, which implies "working IP." Not just words.


    We don't know the Darden side of this correspondence. That is actually what would be important. Suppose, for example, that Penon had actually said "Guaranteed Peformance Test," and Darden had replied, "Well this is okay as a test procedure for this sale of power, but this is not a GPT."


    And then Penon answered, "Sorry, that's not what I meant. This is a dry run for what would be, with appropriate conditions, a GPT with me as ERV." And Darden would have consented to that.


    Context is practically everything. We cannot be sure about this stuff without full context. However, this remains as fact, for now: there is as yet no evidence of IH consent to a GPT, which contractually would need to be explicit and clear, not vague.


    Rossi's complaint was filed as if there were no controversy over ERV and GPT. Yet the excerpts we now have from their early December email shows that they had protested then. So his complaint was misleading; given that objection, he would have needed to provide either a consent document as an Exhibit, or to allege estoppel. He did neither, but the Judge forgave that, effectively, to give him a chance to establish fact or at least specific allegation.


    Rossi's claim is quite weak, unless he comes up with a Wabbit. He has a few weeks left to do it, I think.


    Um, the Judge will rule on the Motion to Dismiss from him that is pending, and then he will have, I think, two weeks.

    The steam pressure sender specs are, um, interesting.
    Someone already noted that the sender is only rated to 85°C.


    But the part number listed in the Test Plan is also for Absolute pressure. So a column of zeros would be wierd.


    PX309-100A5V


    The A in the part number is for Absolute. G is for Gauge pressure (IE: PX309-100G5V)


    http://www.omega.ca/pptst_eng/PX309.html


    http://www.omega.com/pressure/pdf/PX309.pdf

    • Official Post

    There is another possible use for the pipe (with water-meter) going into the external tank, that makes the presence of a water-meter both entirely understandable ** and 'not a fail'. If not entirely 'by the book'.


    That is if it is a feed-water top-up pipe with a float-valve (inside the tank) on the end of it. It would then be full of water at town pressure (In Italy 4-6 Bar) regardless of its orientation and the water meter would operate perfectly well, since any air-bubbles would be flushed out by the high-pressure flow past it when the float valve was opened by falling water level.


    ** ETA. Entirely understandable since Rossi was a 'sub-tenant' in Ferrara/Bondeno and his landlords would have been keen to know how much of the total water use to bill him for.

    Quote from Abd

    Actually, he said some things that were true, nobody with any knowledge contradicted them, but Planet Rossi misread the comments and now sees that the truth contradicts what they misunderstood.


    The history of Rossi's public presence is that he usually says things which are true, but capable of massive misconstruction, which his followers promptly do without question. What interests me is whether Rossi himself makes the same misconstruction, living an a weird world that makes sense (most of the time, and can be ignored when not) or whether he has a deeper knowledge of the possibilities and deliberately paints a favourable picture.


    In a sense the true mystery of the Rossi Effect is this double reading. Rossi presents a weird amalgam of naive and passionate self-trained engineer with an invention he does not understand, and crook. Mats and others close to him seem totally to have bought into the first reading.


    My view FWIW (and you cannot get more speculative than guessing other people's motives) is that Rossi has no interest in or understanding of science or engineering reality and judges things purely as a lever to gain public acclaim. For him the public perception is more real than any dry scientific fact, and he reckons the facts just don't matter because his audience are not interested in the details. This reading, if Rossi himself buys into it, encompasses both crook, and naive passionate engineer.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    any air-bubbles would be flushed out by the high-pressure flow


    Flow is flow, the pressure in the system is not flow. If the float valve opens wide, yes, the flow rate would be high, but if it opens only a little, the flow would be low. Some float valves show high hysteresis. Basically, with a maximally sensitive float valve that opens up for very low flow and only increases the flow for larger movement of the float, the inflow rate would equal the rate of loss of fluid, which would be very low. Like in a toilet with a slow leak from a worn flapper valve.


    (with a high hysteresis float valve and that leaky flapper, one will hear the water turn on rather loudly, periodically. With a slow leak and low hysteresis, one might hear nothing or some continual whine of flowing water through a very small opening, if the leak is strong enough.)


    By the way, yes to "not a fail" if the purpose of that meter is to measure top-off water. That pipe, supplied with town water under pressure, would, indeed, be likely to be full, initially, when the tank was filled at high flow. There would be some risk that air could somehow accumulate there, though, if high flow did not at least periodically flush the pipe.


    f this were low-pressure return water, not so great! However, this is not the configuration at Doral. There is no addition of town water, apparently.


    We really do not know the actual Doral configuration, what we have are inferences -- sometimes plausible! -- from photographs and an idea that the Penon plan was followed, which we definitely don't know until we have better evidence.

    Quote from LENR Calender

    I must say it is a bit disappointing that Penon visited the plant only every 4 months.


    He did not need to visit at all. Why bother? As noted in Exhibit 5, most of the data was obviously fake. They stuffed the same impossible numbers into the table every day for weeks. There is no need to travel anywhere or measure anything. Just use the random number generator feature in a spreadsheet for the temperature, and leave everything else the same. That is exactly what the data shows.


    I am not joking about that. You don't have to visit or take any data to add the same imaginary flow rate every day and pressure of 0.0 bar. You don't even need to have the machine turned on. Indeed, on several days when the log showed the machine was turned off and taken apart for maintenance, the data shows it continued to produce a steady 1 MW of heat. This is not a sophisticated fraud. Rossi and Penon made no effort to fool people with plausible data. You can tell at a glance the data is fake, just as you can tell by looking at the room that you could not release 1 MW of heat there for more than a few minutes without killing everyone.


    There was no test for steam quality. No equipment and no procedures. That tells you all you need to know about this farce. I doubt it was even possible to sample the steam. Anyone can see the pressure must have been above 1.2 bar, so there was no steam.


    You are only "a bit" disappointed? Do you still believe any part of this nonsense? The people on Planet Rossi who still believe this nonsense are pitiful. They have irrational, unquestioning faith based on nothing. They resemble the thousands of people who are taken in by end of the world predictions made by preachers.

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    Quote from JedRothwell: “He did not need to visit at all. Why bother? As noted in Exhibit 5, most of the data was obviously fake.”


    Thousands of measurements per day (each minute!!) were automatically taken by an, possibly old (C64?) computer and…


    Such a pity that a competent independent tester was not there making tests over an extended period to validate all this stuff then?


    It seems Penon was not there. We know from his earlier report (which contained glaringly unprofessional practice) that he is not competent, and from his involvement with Rossi that he is not independent.


    That is three fails out of three.

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