LENR Is Real

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

parallel
Posts: 1131
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:24 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by parallel »

20 kW E-Cat X Reactor is Size of Cigarette Packet.

Energy is the key to prosperity. The results of the one year trial of Industrial Heat's 1 MW plant is due Feb/Mar 2016. I am increasingly optimistic the trial will be a success.
Obviously the E-Cat X is still in the research/experimental stage and Rossi won't release details until it has be tested for a reasonable period of time. If the 1 MW plant does indeed work there is reason to take Rossi at his word on the E-Cat X.
http://www.e-catworld.com/2016/01/13/ro ... te-packet/

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by ladajo »

Well now, that would present an interesting materials problem.

Let's say that said cigarette package measures 3.5in x 2.13in x 0.88 in.
That would give us about 21 in2 surface area and about 6.51 in3 volume.
Now we say that we make it out of steel with the casing 0.25 in thick... which would make for about 5.25 in3 of steel and a reaction volume of 1.25 in3. A hefty design methinks... giving us a mass of about 1.52 lbs of 304 Stainless Steel.
If we take the melting point of SS304), at about 2600 F, and say we start cold at room temp of about 70, that gives us a target Delta-T of 2530 F to complete failure. In reality failure would occur much lower given elasticity and thermal expansion effects. But we'll go for broke on this one, 2600F melting point SS304.
Now, with 20,000 watts (we assume Rossiclown means W-hrs, another indicator he knows not what he says...), we can rough the heat up time by Time (hrs) = (0.05 * mass of steel * Delta-T)/Watts.
This gives us Time (hrs) = (0.05 * 1.5225 * 2530)/20,000 or about 0.01 hours.
This works out to about 35 seconds before it melts. How useful!
Even if we take into account thermal conductivity and heat transfer, it is doubtful that we would remove that much energy fast enough to prevent heat up and melt. 21 in2 passing on 20,000watt-hours or 72 million joules...hmm... as I said at the start, an interesting materials problem.
The bottom line here is that we are not going to get a continuous 20,000 watts out of a steel box that small.
I wonder if it is made out of Unobtanium? That would explain everything.
Last edited by ladajo on Thu Jan 14, 2016 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by ladajo »

Another thought to help put this in perspective is that 20,000 watt-hrs would heat about 832 gallons of water by 10 F in 1 hour. One powerful little pack of cigarettes...
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Axil
Posts: 935
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:34 am

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Axil »

ladajo wrote:Well now, that would present an interesting materials problem.

Let's say that said cigarette package measures 3.5in x 2.13in x 0.88 in.
That would give us about 21 in2 surface area and about 6.51 in3 volume.
Now we say that we make it out of steel with the casing 0.25 in thick... which would make for about 5.25 in3 of steel and a reaction volume of 1.25 in3. A hefty design methinks... giving us a mass of about 1.52 lbs of 304 Stainless Steel.
If we take the melting point of SS304), at about 2600 F, and say we start cold at room temp of about 70, that gives us a target Delta-T of 2530 F to complete failure. In reality failure would occur much lower given elasticity and thermal expansion effects. But we'll go for broke on this one, 2600F melting point SS304.
Now, with 20,000 watts (we assume Rossiclown means W-hrs, another indicator he knows not what he says...), we can rough the heat up time by Time (hrs) = (0.05 * mass of steel * Delta-T)/Watts.
This gives us Time (hrs) = (0.05 * 1.5225 * 2530)/20,000 or about 0.01 hours.
This works out to about 35 seconds before it melts. How useful!
Even if we take into account thermal conductivity and heat transfer, it is doubtful that we would remove that much energy fast enough to prevent heat up and melt. 21 in2 passing on 20,000watt-hours or 72 million joules...hmm... as I said at the start, an interesting materials problem.
The bottom line here is that we are not going to get a continuous 20,000 watts out of a steel box that small.
I wonder if it is made out of Unobtanium? That would explain everything.
Recalculate assuming a 50/50 split between DC electric production and heat production.

parallel
Posts: 1131
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:24 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by parallel »

ladajo
"Another thought to help put this in perspective is that 20,000 watt-hrs would heat about 832 gallons of water by 10 F in 1 hour. One powerful little pack of cigarettes..."

Taking water at 35C inlet temp, 20kWhrs would convert 0.35 gall/minute to steam of 80% quality at 20 psig.

(Calling kW.hrs kWs is something up with which ladajo will not put.)

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by ladajo »

0.145 ft2 of surface area (our famous cigarette pack) infers Boiler Horsepower of area (ft2) / 17, or 0.145/17 which is 0.00853 BoHP which converts to 285.52 BTU or about 83.68 watts. The point being you are severely lacking sufficient surface area to transfer said heat. These numbers are for a 0 psig boiling chamber. 20 psig (267F) is not going to make much difference at all.
It takes 2Kw to heat 5 gallons to boiling in one hour. Standard home steam generators run at about 20Kw to convert 0.135gal/min to steam (roughly 8 gallons per hour).
You are going to need a shit-ton of surface area, and flow to account for your cigarette pack's output to keep it from heating up and melting. And that is incumbent on the steel being able to transfer that amount of heat. At 20psig (~267F), SS304 has about 10 BTU/hr/ft2 thermal conductivity. So our 0.145 ft2 can move about 1.45BTU/hr. This seems to be WAY SHORT of your envisioned 68,290BTU (20Kw). As I suggested in the above post, our little cigarette pack is going to heat up and melt in roughly 35 to 40 seconds or so. Some variance should be accounted for heat transfer efficiency of the reaction volume to SS304 boundary, and the SS304 to external environment boundary.
It seems the thermal dynamics are escaping you here...
Would you like to try another material, maybe one with better thermal conductivity and a higher melting point? I even granted him significant engineering margin by going with 0.25 in thickness of the container. Imagine how much faster it will cook off if I had used 0.125 in? How about the reaction volume? Do you think that 1.5 in3 is enough? Rossiclown said that it would be about 300-400 grams? What did he mean? Total weight of the cigarette pack (not likely), or reaction material (fuel) weight? If it is the total cigarette pack weight (fuel plus container), I wonder what material and fuel he is using to stuff all that into a 0.88 lb package? Steel alone would be 1.5 lbs with no fuel. So if I cut the wall to 0.125 that would give a mass of just the container at where he said the mass was, unfortunately, as noted, it also means it would melt in less than half the time. As we know, Rossiclown likes to use hardware store fittings for his 'science' projects, so I am giving him benefit of the doubt to buy from the expensive shelf with SS304 fittings.
How about we run the numbers with what materials the Rossiclown has said he has used in his mythical testing?
And what exactly were you trying to say with your flow rate post? I am truly sorry to note to you that heat only moves so fast in water, but on the bright side about 20 times faster in steel. If you want to move 20Kw from stainless to water and hold temperature constant, you are going to need magnitudes more area than 21 in2. Say about 5,000 in2 (35 ft2) by rough estimation, and that is not taking into account heat transfer efficiency losses, which will drive it up even more.
Last edited by ladajo on Thu Jan 14, 2016 9:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Giorgio
Posts: 3061
Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:15 pm
Location: China, Italy

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Giorgio »

Axil wrote:
ladajo wrote:Well now, that would present an interesting materials problem.

Let's say that said cigarette package measures 3.5in x 2.13in x 0.88 in.
That would give us about 21 in2 surface area and about 6.51 in3 volume.
Now we say that we make it out of steel with the casing 0.25 in thick... which would make for about 5.25 in3 of steel and a reaction volume of 1.25 in3. A hefty design methinks... giving us a mass of about 1.52 lbs of 304 Stainless Steel.
If we take the melting point of SS304), at about 2600 F, and say we start cold at room temp of about 70, that gives us a target Delta-T of 2530 F to complete failure. In reality failure would occur much lower given elasticity and thermal expansion effects. But we'll go for broke on this one, 2600F melting point SS304.
Now, with 20,000 watts (we assume Rossiclown means W-hrs, another indicator he knows not what he says...), we can rough the heat up time by Time (hrs) = (0.05 * mass of steel * Delta-T)/Watts.
This gives us Time (hrs) = (0.05 * 1.5225 * 2530)/20,000 or about 0.01 hours.
This works out to about 35 seconds before it melts. How useful!
Even if we take into account thermal conductivity and heat transfer, it is doubtful that we would remove that much energy fast enough to prevent heat up and melt. 21 in2 passing on 20,000watt-hours or 72 million joules...hmm... as I said at the start, an interesting materials problem.
The bottom line here is that we are not going to get a continuous 20,000 watts out of a steel box that small.
I wonder if it is made out of Unobtanium? That would explain everything.
Recalculate assuming a 50/50 split between DC electric production and heat production.
No, the box is the Heat Generator so the Heat Flux coming out of the box has nothing to do with the use you make of heat in a subsequent step.

That is unless Rossi is also claiming a way to convert heat into electricity inside the (cigarette size package) reactor itself.
A society of dogmas is a dead society.

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by ladajo »

Giorgio, help out here, you do thermal dynamics, what do you make of this? I am running on thirty year old recollections. I may have gotten my approach wrong. My base take is that the conductivity is too low to support that much energy transferring in that small a package using steel/water.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Axil
Posts: 935
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:34 am

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Axil »

Giorgio wrote: No, the box is the Heat Generator so the Heat Flux coming out of the box has nothing to do with the use you make of heat in a subsequent step.

That is unless Rossi is also claiming a way to convert heat into electricity inside the (cigarette size package) reactor itself.
Rossi claims that DC current radiates out of the wafer. I assume this DC power comes out of the wafer like what occurs in a vacuum tube. This power is probably collected using a grid.

parallel
Posts: 1131
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:24 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by parallel »

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop as ladajo, as usual, has not read up on the subject. Rossi also stated the E-Cat X can generate 50:50 heat and electricity directly, so we are only talking about 10 kW here as heat.
He also states the size does not include the equipment to recover said heat and electric power, but is just the size of the reactor.
As ladajo thinks he knows it all already it is not necessary for him to have facts.

Look, stars! says ladajo as he bangs his head on the desk.

krenshala
Posts: 914
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:20 pm
Location: Austin, TX, NorAm, Sol III

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by krenshala »

parallel wrote:I was waiting for the other shoe to drop as ladajo, as usual, has not read up on the subject. Rossi also stated the E-Cat X can generate 50:50 heat and electricity directly, so we are only talking about 10 kW here as heat.
He also states the size does not include the equipment to recover said heat and electric power, but is just the size of the reactor.
As ladajo thinks he knows it all already it is not necessary for him to have facts.

Look, stars! says ladajo as he bangs his head on the desk.
Okay, so its 10kW of heat in the cigarette pack sized container. What material? If we go by ladajo's materials numbers, and your (or Rossi's, if you prefer) 10kW thermal number, that still means it will melt SS304 in approximately 2 minutes time (maybe less).

Axil
Posts: 935
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:34 am

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Axil »

krenshala wrote:
parallel wrote:I was waiting for the other shoe to drop as ladajo, as usual, has not read up on the subject. Rossi also stated the E-Cat X can generate 50:50 heat and electricity directly, so we are only talking about 10 kW here as heat.
He also states the size does not include the equipment to recover said heat and electric power, but is just the size of the reactor.
As ladajo thinks he knows it all already it is not necessary for him to have facts.

Look, stars! says ladajo as he bangs his head on the desk.
Okay, so its 10kW of heat in the cigarette pack sized container. What material? If we go by ladajo's materials numbers, and your (or Rossi's, if you prefer) 10kW thermal number, that still means it will melt SS304 in approximately 2 minutes time (maybe less).
If it were me designing the heat removal system, I would use a lithium heat pipe design to move heat away from the LENR reactor core. Some high temperature nuclear reactors use this strategy on cooling this kind of high temperature reactors.

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by ladajo »

The point you are missing Parallel, as usual, is reality.
Again, I ask of you, what materials are Rossiclown using for his magic cigarette pack that won't melt in now 60 seconds (10Kw)?
And how is said magical 10Kw of electricity exiting the device for collection?

Apparently you are unaware of the levels of energy and transmission requirements to move it around. We have already established that you have no clue what it takes to transmit 20Kw of heat, or even 10Kw for that matter, across steel into water. Now we are establishing that you have never engineered the handling of 10Kw of electrical power either. Let's say that Rossiclown opts to handle his 10Kw in DC power with a well recognized 12Volts DC model, so that would be 833 Amps DC. Hmmm. Let's, as an exercise, jump it up to 100VDC, now we are at 100amps DC, still not trivial for steady state handling, probably looking at 2/0 (0.4 in diameter copper, 0.5 in diameter insulated) wire rated for the device temps (where-ever it magically hooks up). That is some heavy wire my friend...just for fun, if you wanted to run the 12V way, the wire would be pushing 1.5 in diameter, or should I say Bus Bar... which is almost TWICE THE THICKNESS and is 3/4 THE WIDTH of your magic cigarette box. Now if we can just figure out how that pesky 10Kw of DC power is escaping its metal trap...maybe Giorgio is on to something thinking that the generated energy can be considered a flux.
What is escaping you in you infinite engineering wisdom is that Rossi is proposing heat and energy loading density to the extreme, and beyond conventional materials and design. Have you considered that it takes about 21 lbs of coal to produce 20Kw? Imagine jamming 21lbs of ignited coal into 1.5 in3 of volume. Or in nuclear terms, to compare, the school reactor at Missouri S&T comprises a core volume of 6,156 in3, and runs at a max of 200Kw. That works out to 32.49 W/in3 compared to the 13,333 W/in3 in Rossiclowns magic cigarette pack. MST burns LEU U235, with 12.5 grams per fuel plate.
I would hope that the above makes you wonder if you actually know what you are talking about. It clearly appears you do not.

Keep taking it on faith, right to your grave. Cause that's where you'll be, and Rossiclown will still have nothing real.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by ladajo »

And one more thing!!!
In case you are wondering; energy loading in a HEU fuel plate runs about 6,500w/in3, or less than half of Rossiclown's magic cigarettes. So you ask, what is the difference between a LEU and HEU plate, LEU's run about 5% up to the high end of 20% enrichment (most are low end), whereas HEU's run 93-95% enrichment. So, 19 times the U density. HEU is the super-whammadyne nitrus version of fission plant fuel.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Axil
Posts: 935
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:34 am

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Axil »

ladajo wrote:And one more thing!!!
In case you are wondering; energy loading in a HEU fuel plate runs about 6,500w/in3, or less than half of Rossiclown's magic cigarettes. So you ask, what is the difference between a LEU and HEU plate, LEU's run about 5% up to the high end of 20% enrichment (most are low end), whereas HEU's run 93-95% enrichment. So, 19 times the U density. HEU is the super-whammadyne nitrus version of fission plant fuel.
This is some wonderful stuff ahead it; it won't be long to wait.

Post Reply