Thermal imaging has pros and cons. It is more indirect, relying on a lot of calculations. I don't mind this, they can be checked. The big problem is the emissivity which has to be calibrated via a control or input as a theoretical number.
You can get round this:
(1) by using material which behaves well near to a black body with emissivity that does not change with temperature
(2) making control measurements with a thermocouple at close to the measured temperature
The first thermal imaging e-cat test did this stuff quite well.
The current test does not do it, and has some issues:
(1) Al2O3 has a variable emissivity with temperature
(2) Al2O3 has a variable transparency with wavelength (if transparent the emissivity becomes that of whatever is opaque beneath).
(3) Al2O3 has a variable transparency with crystalline structure
(4) the calibration was done at a much lower temperature than the test, no thermocouple calibration of the test.
So the result may still be fine, but it is very difficult to prove that it is fine. In this case the assumption is the Al2O3 has an emissivity of approx 0.4 at working temperature for the active tests is difficult to prove. The emissivity could be as high as 1 and that would result in a large over-estimation of the COP. The previous test assumed emissivity 1 so did not have this problem.
Another problem is convective loss, because you do not ahve a closed system. This, again, does not matter if you can safely ignore it and then get a lower bound on the output power. If you try to include it, as done in the second e-cat report, it is not safe because you are making assumptions about the type of flow (turbulent, laminar) etc which are difficult to be sure about. However in the seconmd e-cat report the convective compoent of the output power is relatively small so uncertainty about this does not invalidate the overall results.
Heh... I wouldn't know where to start on that mess. Basically it's all wrong. Nobody designs a highly exothermic device without some type of forced cooling system. Any such system makes it much more precise and easier to measure output power. Input power has to be restricted with a tester-supplied power supply ahead of the experiment to rule out cheating with rigged wires and bad metering methods.
Maybe Gordon Docherty can be bothered to answer why Rossi uses a heater for safety or control instead of coolant. And why the dummy run did not even approach operating temperature. Now think about it. The same wires are in the same container in the dummy run as in the supposed very high power run which is very hot. Why would the dummy run to the identical temperature of the active run damage anything at all? It is amazing to me that Rossi sets up these absurd scenarios and the believers keep on buying it time after time like the silly million unit a year robotic factory, the customer who never appears, and of course, complete conversion of nickel to the 62 isotope while the reactor continues to the very end to provide full power. Wow. There does seem to be a sucker born every second.
Rossi must be laughing hysterically all the way to the bank.
@Thomas Clarke: If the alumina is transparent enough so that the thermal camera sees mostly or even partly the hot wire instead of the enclosure, then both the emissivity value AND the surface area used in the calculations were wrong, both in the direction of making the temperature appear MUCH higher than it really is. Anyone know the excuse for not checking with the thermocouple inside the device?
Yikes! I have no clue what you just said so OK. Fine.
I just saw an old image of three original ecats standing on a board on a table top in early 2011. Lewan, Kullander and Essen could have stopped all the guessing if they had just asked Rossi to do this simple routine:
Put two reactors on the table without hydrogen. Run them from a metered power supply located upstream of the experiment. At random, chose one reactor to have hydrogen introduced, and the other to serve as a blank. Measure the output heat by any chosen method, doesn't matter. Make sure that the blank correctly indicates the Joule heat from the heater at the same temperature expected of the active reactor. Compare the outputs. Reverse the units without changing anything else (remove hydrogen from one and introduce it to the other) and repeat. Had they done that, they could have saved three years of struggling with "Rossi says" and bad experiments like the current one.
But Alain, without calibration, you have no idea about the size of the error. You have also no idea whether or not Rossi falsified the input power measurement because the experimenters did not properly rule out trick wiring. They were told of this possibility so there is no excuse. Between errors in measuring the output temperature (and power out is a fourth power function of that temperature, by the way), and possible errors in the input power, NOBODY has a clue what really happened. This has been true of EVERY Rossi experiment which has been made public.
Quoteerrors are as visible for an electric engineer
Perhaps you can help me. I'm not sure who in the testing team has three phase electrical power measurement expertise? They are the exact person who needs to look at the resistance issue.
Whomever it is may be a bit embarrassed - the report makes an assumption about the ratio of currents between C1 and C2 circuits that is not true for three phase power. Because the triac duty cycle is quite low in this case the error is small, and not one to worry about, but the report is incorrect - they don't say they are making an approximation - this shows a lack of familiarity with three phase circuits.
Quotedifferentiation of 3300W from 900W is possible without calibration.moreover if you assume that the COP is 1, then the 800W period of run is a calibration at high temperature, and the 900W period prove there is COP>1
your theory is dead thus. the rest is out of the question.
Not quite. Given the possibility of a X3 error in AC measurement, whether due to clamp misplacement, or mistaking line power for total power, or something else, another error of 20% or so is needed to square the results. In this case, X3 input error, the temperature really is very different, and errors in alumina emissivity or transparency (and it mat be a thin film of alumina, so no-one can say how transparent it is) can happily do this, shoring also the difference in COP with temperature since the misreading would be temperature dependent.
And I don't think such a X3 mistake implies gigantic fraud.
This last cannot be ruled out given some of the testers have been involved in the e-cat stuff for a long time as Rossi co-workers. Personally I'd go for mistake, not deliberate error, from the testers, since we always underestimate the ability of people to make mistakes, especially when encouraged to do so by others.
Ok - for the 100s of fraudulent scientists working on LENR. If you look carefully at the results you will see 99% of them - and all that have been replicated - are experimentally questionable. The excess heat only exists if you make certain assumptions which are never tested. I'll take any single replicated LENR test you like and say what these are and why it does not indicate nuclear-level excess heat. Or else admit there is something.
Hum, it seems you did not read it so sincerely.
about electricity, note the the assumption that the two branch show similar current have a minor effect on the result. few watt over few kW.
It seems your tactic is to be sure on things where we don't have data, transforming the lead of ignorance into the gold of confidence, and then with a high COP transforming 10W of uncertainty into 2000W or error. You make low energy nuclear transmutation. 
Thomas, you raise the possibility that the E-cat is a fraud and that persons unknown are in 'cahoots' with Rossi.
You need to take a step back... what you are alluding to is a 'Conspiracy'.
Do you believe that Industrial Heat, the Professors involved in the latest test, Elforsk and of course Andrea Rossi are partaking in the greatest scam in history... If so please collect your free Tinfoil Hat from 'MY', and then explain how this fraud is going to succeed.
I have read your posts... and I suspect that the investors,the professors,and the suppressors have been following not only your arguments but also other well reasoned objections to the latest report.
... and the deafening silence makes me more confident... that the E-cat is the real thing.
Greatest scam in history? A few million dollars? I don't think it comes close to the recent scams from China or the scam that Mitsubishi perpetrated on a San Diego utility regarding the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant-- those are in billions.
Do we need to postulate a conspiracy? Maybe Levi but not the others. Lack of experience and resulting incompetence is enough. See for example the CORRECT method for testing an ecat or a hot cat as exhibited by Giancarlo here:
That's the Google translate English link-- the original is available in Italian:
http://gsvit.wordpress.com/201…te-calorimetria-a-flusso/
This is apparently the device that doomed Defkalion. According to Giancarlo, it was also used to show that Celani's much discussed magic wires do NOT make excess power. Strangely, now, nobody wants to use that method! I wonder why!
