I'm going to draw some conclusions from the published data in the Lugano Report. I know that others have done similar calculations, but maybe not laid them out with care and clarity.
The measurements I'm going to look at are those for Joule heating in the wires feeding the reactor, and those for total power delivered to the reactor from the control unit. Both sets of measurements are made by the same instrument - a 3 phase power analyser. The Joule heating is calculated from the feed wire (mostly copper) resistivity and the measured RMS current in the wires. The total input power is derived from the power meter. The report authors do not state exactly how this is done but the instrument is very capable and can internally calculate and display many powers. Of particular relevance here it can calculate the total power, and the phase power, which differ by a factor of 3.
The report contains the following measurements for the three cases of dummy test, 1250C test, and 1400C test.
Test | Joule heating power in leads/W | Total supplied power/W | ratio |
dummy (500C) | 6.7 | 486 | 75.54 |
active (1250C) | 36.8 | 796.7 | 21.65 |
active (1400C) | 41.7 | 912.4 | 21.88 |
The point is that these measurements are all made by the same equipment, and although assumptions such as the resistivity of the leads etc may be incorrect, the ratio of these powers will always indicate the ratio in resistance of the leads and the Inconel wire heating element. We know the leads are mostly copper and also don't vary much in temperature, so there would seem to be a change in resistivity of the heating element by a factor of 3.3 between the dummy tests and the two active tests.
Interestingly the hotter active test (an extra 150C) does not change the resistivity, as shown by this ratio, by more than 1%. So we have an anomalous 300% change from 500C to 1250C, and a 1% change from 1250C to 1400C.
That is inconceivable, especially because data on Inconel 625 (a high temperature Inconel alloy such as was presumably used) shows less than 5% change over the range 20C to 1090C. See data here.
So we have a X3.3 anomaly in the two methods of measuring power. Either the dummy is wrong or the active test is wrong. We know the dummy is correct (to within 10%) because it matched measured power out. Therefore the dummy ratio is approximately correct, 75, and the correct input power for the active runs is some 3.3X larger than the report power measurement for these cases.
That would make the correct measured COP around 1
Only the report authors can explain how this anomaly came about, but I have a suggestion. Three phase power meters can display phase power or total power. If the equipment was set to total power for the dummy measurement, and set to phase power for the active measurements, it would make a typically X3 difference in the data which would leave an anomaly of only 10%. This could be a result of a small resistivity change and other errors, such as asymmetry of power between the three phases caused by resistance variations causing phase power for a given phase to be different from the typical 1/3 of total power.
The comments above are based solely on the information contained in the published report. I am making no inferences or assumptions about the likelihood or not of LENR, or any matters relating to the probity of the testers or Rossi.
I hope that those who believe this test adds to the evidence for Rossi's e-cat actually having nuclear-level power production will suggest a hypothesis that explains this data in some way consistent with that. I also hope that the authors of the report will identify the error and rewrite the report with consistent data. I note that they have said they may change the report to reflect comment on questions. Perhaps the change in this case could include a description of why the original measurements were inconsistent by a factor of approximately 3 as well as the corrected measurements.
My question, for the authors of the report, would be to explain the above anomaly. In that context it might help to have more information about how the power measurements were taken from the power meter, and whether any checks were made that the measurements taken were in fact identical in the dummy and active run cases. If stored data from the power meter is available this should help to elucidate the matter. Precise information on measurements (are reported currents RMS or average) would also help.
Best wishes, Tom