Giorgio wrote:I wonder if the University of Uppsala and the University of Stockolm do have some spare flow-meters to finally make a test as it should be done.
Judging by;
We trust them, and we know they are really neutral, without binds with competitors of any kind. I personally knew them and I have in them total trust.
..I doubt they would have flow meters. They may be so trustworthy that they forget to do blind tests first aswell; by increasing the temp without adding H2, and by trying alternative gases and non-polar liquids to heat up.
With 'trust' comes certain responsibilities, if you get my drift.
chrismb wrote:..I doubt they would have flow meters. They may be so trustworthy that they forget to do blind tests first aswell; by increasing the temp without adding H2, and by trying alternative gases and non-polar liquids to heat up.
With 'trust' comes certain responsibilities, if you get my drift.
Kinda reminds me of a certain Rowan University...
I hope they will not follow the example.
Kahuna wrote:Looks like Prof. Kullander and Prof Hanno (Sweden) are going to get their own E-Cat to play with according to a post by Rossi today:
I wonder if the University of Uppsala and the University of Stockolm do have some spare flow-meters to finally make a test as it should be done.
You might want to drop them an email on the subject. Based on the following response from Essen posted on another blog, I suspect one or both might be quite forthcoming:
Dear Prof Essen,
I note your recent report on a demonstartion of the Rossi reactor.
Given your status as a skeptic, your views are of course of interest
here. The demonstration, if valid, would be an extraordinary and
exciting event.
I have read your report carefully, and note one missing detail. You
say that the water flow rate is measured at the start of the
experiment, and that the water/steam outlet is located in a
different room from the reactor.
However you give no information about whether the input flow rate
stays constant throughout the demonstration. Naturally your
calculations are only correct if this is valid. Do you have any
evidence of this?
Best wishes, Tom
Hello fellow skeptic
The pump was set from the start to produce a certain well defined flow
rate. As long as I was there there was no further tampering with the
pump. I agree that this could have been better checked. Our test
presumes that this is about physics, chemistry and technology. If it
is trickery there are some gaps, but I have no reason to believe it
is. Eventually there will be independent tests at the University of
Bologna and they should settle the matter finally, as regards
calorimetry.
Also, the heating resistor is located outside the copper pipe through which the water flows around the interior stainless reactor cell. You would think the water jacket would mess with any regulating effect the heating resistor could possibly have.
I thought that the heating coil that provides regulating heat was enclosed inside the stainless steel reaction vessel.
Nope, its on the outside. It is pretty clearly visible as an external jacket in the pictures associated with the last demo. I'm told the one he is using is a standard commericial item designed for use with plastic extrusion nossels.
Here is some Rossi Q&A that seems to confirm the placement of the heater:
QUESTION: I’m confused about the caption on the closeup picture on the NyTeknik article on the 4.5 KW demo. It says “Close view of the main resistor surrounding the copper tube, which in turn surrounds the steel reactor.” How can the resistor heat the nickel up to 500C through the water?
ANSWER: To answer to your question I should give you information regarding the design of the reactor. I can’t.
It would have to be an inductive heater - though it would make little sense to have the heating coil outside of the copper jacket as it would absorb all the energy - it would be best inside the reactor itself, or second best outside the low-conductivity stainless steel jacket. I vaguely recall mention of a high frequency power supply for the heater a few months ago - and this would make sense for an inductive heater.
The pump was set from the start to produce a certain well defined flow
rate. As long as I was there there was no further tampering with the
pump. I agree that this could have been better checked. Our test
presumes that this is about physics, chemistry and technology. If it
is trickery there are some gaps, but I have no reason to believe it
is. Eventually there will be independent tests at the University of
Bologna and they should settle the matter finally, as regards
calorimetry.
Hanno Essén
So....errr..... this means that providing you don't suspect trickery then you do not need to perform usual scientific objective measurements.
... riiiiiiight!
So are we to take from this ambiguous response any indication that they plan to do careful measurements?
Mention of the resister as being the same as those used for plastic extrusion nozzels (like a very strong hot glue gun), the question of the current this resister is handling and why such a resister was chose is raised. If you need to heat a plastic to near melted temperatures quickly so that you would have good extrusion speeds, you need a lot of amps/ Watts. Possibly even 10-20 thousand Watts worth. I don't know if they quoted an input heater current, but it is an obvious item that needs independent measurement. Why use such a high power resister if only a few amps is needed?
In Europe, the line voltage is 220 V, so if they had a step down transformer in their box, the typical wall socket could deliver twice the heating current if the voltage was stepped down to the same voltage (say 12 V) compared to US outlets. So if their line amp ratings was the same as US ratings, it would be twice as easy to get the required heating without needing to plug into a suspicious higher rated outlet. That combined with tricks with the actual water volume heated and measured vs the apparent total flow out of the discharge hose leaves a lot of wiggle room for deceiving results.
A passive observer can be shown the water pump/ facet, the closed box and some large wires, the foil wrapped device, the thermometer, even the input volt amp meter. But without knowing the accuracy / calibration of the meters, thermometer, and the water flow pathways through the device, he can honestly say that the device seems to work, and this assessment would only have validity if the witness assumes the honesty of the presenter. That is what this boils down to. Even an honest witness only sees what is obvious. An investigator though, should craw inside the machine and make no assumptions.
One of the assertions coming from Rossi, IIRC, is that the heat-output reaction can be started/stopped at the flick of a switch. If so, then Axil's observations regarding the need for a separate "exciter" (so to speak) are useful. An exciter, that is, that does its thing iff heat from an external source is being applied to it. Such an arrangement (exciter/reactor) may not be incompatible with the devices ("E-Kittens" ?) shown in the latest pics.
Considerations of efficient mass production (as well as long-term maintenance of multi-kitten arrays) may have dictated that the source of the heat that drives the "exciter" be located in an external position.
"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden." Chauncey Gardiner
raphael wrote:One of the assertions coming from Rossi, IIRC, is that the heat-output reaction can be started/stopped at the flick of a switch. If so, then Axil's observations regarding the need for a separate "exciter" (so to speak) are useful. An exciter, that is, that does its thing iff heat from an external source is being applied to it. Such an arrangement (exciter/reactor) may not be incompatible with the devices ("E-Kittens" ?) shown in the latest pics.
Considerations of efficient mass production (as well as long-term maintenance of multi-kitten arrays) may have dictated that the source of the heat that drives the "exciter" be located in an external position.
An independent exciter is required exclusive of heat.
The exciter that controls the reaction can not be heat. It must be electrostatic and/or magnetic excitation of the walls of the stainless steel reaction chamber generated by the inductive heater.
Heat alone cannot be the factor that controls the reaction because the heat from nuclear processes would interfere (add to) with the application of control heat and result in a runaway meltdown.
Here is the inventor Andrea Rossi answering to Mr Frank on the Journal of Nuclear phisics about a request of “validation” of the E-Cat:
Dear Mr Frank:
I receive every day requests from all the world of Universities, Associations, Laboratories from any Country, of any kind which want to make an “indipendent” test to offer us the only possible real validation of the technology. Should I accept, 24 hours per day, 365days per year would not be enough to be so much validated. I respect all the wannavalidate of the Planet, but I want to remember that:
1- In October we will start deliver to our Customers our plants, so that the validation will be made by the Customers: they will use our plants 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. That is the sole real validation that counts for us, also because if the plants work, Customers will pay us, if not, they will not pay us. The plants have to respect precise guarantees we gave about their efficiency and their safety. We are not searching any validation. We never did. We just wanted to make a good product.We have already made our public presentations, no more of them will be made. With the University of Bologna we will continue the R&D program, but not to “validate”: the validation must arrive from the market. The aim of the R&D program with the University of Bologna, financed by us, and therefore made with our money, is to develope our future, not to “validate”. Not to mention the fact that the real target of the wannabe validators, in 99 cases out of 100, is to get information and make industrial espionage, as already occurred to me with another “validator” with whom we severed any collaboration after getting evidence of the fact that data obtained from us have been utilized for a competition.
2- I thank anyway Prof. Peter Hagelstein for his attention. If the MIT is interested to our product, they can buy a plant, and make all the validations they want, for themselves, and get from it good heating too, during the hard Bostonian winters ( I lived there for some year, mamma mia, che freddo!)
parallel wrote:No one could possibly do a validation without fraud except chrismb. He is so expert he leaves his occupation blank.
I don't understand your sentiment. I've posted my background before, when this site was working off the principle "who are you to put this argument forward". I am a reliability/environmental test engineer. I am a Chartered Engineer and a member of SEE and IEEE for >10 years, and ex-University Research Fellow. I spend my whole professional life working out how to make other people's designs and equipment fail. In doing so, once I have been involved in someone's project, they usually end up cursing me for the first few months, they spend a pile of money making their product better, then save millions in avoiding warranty returns.
Does that cover it for you [and explain to you why it is right for at least someone to resist playing 'merry cheer-leader']?
Last edited by chrismb on Sun Apr 17, 2011 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
parallel wrote:No one could possibly do a validation without mistakes except chrismb. He is so expert he leaves his occupation blank.
Edit. Used wrong word
I think you changed the word so as to allude to me thinking of myself as a perfectionist.
Far from it, I make as many mistakes as the next person but, as per above post, it takes only one failure mode to show a design is unfit - that is, if one sets out to show something doesn't work, they only have to show it doesn't work in one, single aspect. They can try to disprove a thing 10 times and get it wrong 9 times, but the one time they get it right and nail the product, the product is shown to be defective. You can't afford not to hammer away at a products weaknesses, if you want to find those weaknesses, but you don't have to be 'successful' in causing it to fail in every test. Just one.
The proposer of a thing has to prove it works for every test, whereas the objector merely has to prove it fails in one test. Unfair, perhaps, but that's the way the world works. Get it?
chrismb.
Some while ago I clicked on your profile and at that time you had left your occupation blank. My apologies if you have updated it.
I had got the opinion that you (like many others) had jumped to the conclusion that Rossi was fraudulent, when there is a lot of evidence that the E-Cat is real and nothing that I have seen indicating fraud.
As I have stated earlier, it would be far better to word things in a way that does not imply fraud. Possibly you hadn't meant to imply that, but never-the-less that is how it reads.
I tend to give a substantial group of qualified people, like those running and witnessing the test, the benefit of the doubt. They should be quite capable of realizing the possible errors in measurement. I assume they concluded the excess heat was well above the margin of error, even if the measurements could have been done better.
Take Rossi at his word and wait and see if he produces hardware this year before making accusations. I will be surprised if he can complete his 1 MW device by October and expect it to run some months late.
Having now read your second post (that overlapped with mine), no, I'm not accusing you of being a perfectionist, but rather failing to recognize that the people running the tests were reasonably intelligent.
As I said above, they should be able to recognize if the excess heat was well above the possible measurement errors. Yes, the measurements could have been done better. But the latter does not imply fraud.
Read that quote from Rossi above again. He is not interested in the sort of validation you seem to require before believing in LENR.
parallel wrote:Having now read your second post (that overlapped with mine), no, I'm not accusing you of being a perfectionist, but rather failing to recognize that the people running the tests were reasonably intelligent.
As I said above, they should be able to recognize if the excess heat was well above the possible measurement errors. Yes, the measurements could have been done better. But the latter does not imply fraud.
But with a specific comment that went along the lines of "we didn't need to measure this, because we don't assume fraud so trust an indirect, yet essential, measurement" is just flat-out unscientific. If they are not seeking to measure every variable to within a ppm of its existence then I regret that I am, indeed, unable to view the monitoring as 'intelligently done'.
parallel wrote:Read that quote from Rossi above again. He is not interested in the sort of validation you seem to require before believing in LENR.
That's great. All strength to him. Get a few early-followers prepared to risk real money to buy the thing, and then we can all buy one and copy it if it works out. Great!
I have zero objection to Rossi getting on with it and selling it to whomsoever he can persuade to part with real money. My objection is to spurious claims that damage bona-fide small-scale fusion research for everyone else. It's already a joke after Pons/Fleishmann. This is just gonna nail the joke permanently and anyone with a sub $10billion fusion project after this is gonna be laughed at.
