Response to Ethan Siegel and Comments on the E-Cat 32-Day Test Report (Guest Post by Michael Lammert)

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The “Joule heating” calculation for the Cu wire for the dummy run on pages 13-14 seems to be fairly straight forward. The “Joule heating” is simply the resistance of the wire times the current squared flowing through that wire. Sum the Joule heating in the 3 Cu wires from the controller and the 6 Cu wires to the device and you have the power that comes out of controller, but doesn’t participate in heating the Inconel coils. This is such a simple calculation, that it seems unlikely that an error would be made in other calculations of Joule heating. However, the “Joule heating” in the Cu wires for the active run has been calculated in Table 7, page 22 as about 37W for the input power at 800W and about 42W for the operation at 920W. These “Joule heating” calculations imply that the current in the Cu wires was 2.35 times as high in the 800W active run as it was in the dummy run (SQRT(37/6.7) = 2.35). The only way for this to be possible is for the Inconel resistors to have a very large negative temperature coefficient of resistance. Although the report did not specify what type of Inconel was used in the coils, the data sheets for various Inconels show well less than 10% variation in resistivity over a wide temperature range. For example, Inconel 625 has a resistivity of 135.9 microohm-cm at 427 oC and 133.9 microohm-cm at 1093 oC. Other Inconels have a slightly increasing resistivity as the temperature increases. Also it should be pointed out that if the Inconel used in the coils in this experiment had a large negative TCR, then the Joule heating as calculated in Table 7 would have been much higher than 42W for the 900W portion of the test. The calculated “Joule heating” powers are directly proportional to the “consumption” powers, indicating no change in resistivity of the Inconel coils as the temperature increases from about 1260 oC to 1400 oC in the two portions of the active runs. Questions for the authors: 1. What is the source of the error in the “Joule heating” calculation for the active run? 2. What type of Inconel was used in the resistor coils? 3. What was the current flowing through the resistors for each of the active power levels?

I agree with much of this, except:

(1) the implicit assumption that power in is measured identically in the dummy and active tests. It is entirely possible that a change in the PCE settings could move from total power to phase power therefore making a X 1/3 change which would match the anomaly. Power in 3 phase systems is slippery - it is easy to make mistakes. We don't know how the supplied figure was derived so can only guess.

(2) the evidence that the resistance measures within 1% for a temperature chnage from 1250C to 1400C effectively makes a 300% change in resistance (that is a change to 1/3rd) from 500C to 1250C impossible. Quite independently of the known characteristics of the wires.

BTW the highest melting point I can find for any Inconel alloy is 1430C, so it is possible the wires were a higher nickel content alloy.

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it [the possibility of mistake] seems extraordinary, thus it requires extraordinary evidence.

You are confusing hypotheses and facts.

The report contains figures that are inconsistent. Any qualified electrical engineer, reading it carefully (a fair job - it requires some careful reading to extract the numbers) will agree.

I think you are confusing a hypothesis, which can be extraordinary, with a human mistake. Human mistakes in science are normal, not extraordinary. Anyone is capable of making elementary mistakes. That is why scientists require replication. They do not have the hubris to imagine that they can't make mistakes.