AR apparently bought 10Kg of Platinum sponges, they would be worth quite a lot of money, I wonder where they went?

http://www.specialtymetals....

If you read further it seems it was only a quote he received from Johnson Mathey, which was never finalized as a purchase. Instead he bought a particular filter from a JM distributor, which he mined for a few ounces of the Platinum material that he needed for experimentation.

I'll recheck that, it seemed like a nice portable pension fund.

Document 245-24, while not conclusive, there doesn't appear to be a cancellation email.

235-10 contains tons of new photos and other information. This will take some time to analyze.

235-10: p19 Water Flow Issues

http://www.engineeringtoolb...
Coefficient of thermal expansion steel 12*10^-6 m/m C
Length of pipe 30m
dt=100-20=80C
Expansion pipe from E-cat to black box = 30*80*12/10^6 = 0.0288m – 28.8mm. Call it 3cm.
It looks to me like the 'Serpentine heat exchanger' is a set of flexibility bends to relieve the thermal expansion of the pipework from the E-cat to the black box.
http://www.spiraxsarco.com/...
Is a good read for the beginner.
Hint: Turn Fig 10.4.9 on its side and clockwise and compare to Mr Smith's diagram of the 'Serpentine Ht Ex'. OK, add a few more bends to the fig.
The reader might also like to ponder about the mystery of lagging a heat exchanger so that it does not work!

I would agree with Mr Smith that the 'Serpentine heat exchanger' is probably a water circuit driven by the Grunfos pump with a filter. It is a flushing and startup system. To keep temperatures uniform as you start up a once-through boiler system, you must flood the boiler and circulate the water to all parts.

What you should never do is switch on the heaters in the BF units with the water at half a glass and let the water boil when other parts of the system are stone cold. Has Mr Smith ever worked on a once-through boiler power station? I have. You should heat and circulate the working fluid throughout the system to provide a steady, gentle ramp rate for metal temperatures (constrained 70C temperature changes reach yield stress like railway lines buckle in the hot sun). Annoyingly, I have read a startup procedure for the E-cat and I have now lost it among all the documents. The start-up procedure ends with a boil-back to normal operating level.

235-10 is completely devastating to the Rossi side on 1 point (at least).

The maximum output of the pumps feeding the "Big Frankies" (the only units in service during the 1-year test) is 32 L/h each. There are 24 of these pumps and adding everything together means there is a maximum of 768 Kg/h moving through the ecat reactors. That is less than half of the return condensate flow.

The only way out of this is if the pumps are somehow modified to run at twice their rated maximum. I have no idea if this is even possible.

Websearch on 'prominent gamma 23w'
There is a photo of the data plate of a BF feed pump in the court evidence that states it is a 23w. These pumps appear to no longer be manufactured.

The pump performance is dictated by stroke rate, stroke length and backpressure. 32L/h is the rating at high backpressure. The medium pressure rating is 36l/h. So what is the backpressure of the E-cat pumps?

The target total flowrate is 1500kg/h, so 1500/24=62.5kg/h per pump which is well above 36l/h, so there is a query here. There is something we do not know. A modification to the pumps for very low backpressure operation is a contender for the solution perhaps?

You would have to increase the stroke rate beyond the maximum of 180/min (see http://www.prominentfluid.c... ). Not the most elegant solution since it would certainly reduce the lifetime of the pump.

235-10 : p23/4
‘In Mr. Penon’s report, he is reporting alleged steam temperatures that are slightly superheated’
True!

‘The construction of the BF units precludes the use of internal superheaters.’
Wrong!

‘All the heating elements of the BF units are submerged in water, which means that they can only generate saturated “steam”.’
Wrong!

‘there are no heating elements above the alleged water line, there can be no internal superheat.’
Wrong on both counts!

‘Are there external superheaters on the BF units?’
No!

Perhaps Mr Rick Smith would care to explain how a steam outlet pipe can be flooded when the boiler gauge glass shows a level at mid height?
http://www.e-catworld.com/2...
Hint: Expand the photos in the thread

How do you know where the tops of the heating elements are? Maybe they are below the half-way mark.

I am not saying that superheating is impossible. But I don't understand how you can be so certain in what you say.

Type 'superheat' into the search box at the top of the ECW home page. That should get you to all the discussion. There is a 'Rossi says' that states the E-cat superheats.

There is also a photo of an E-cat module (see http://www.e-catworld.com/2... with the top removed. The fins on the heat exchanger reach almost to the top of the steam space and when the E-cat operates at half-a-glass there is a length of fin above the internal water level. That length of fin above the water level is the superheater.

Yes I recall that there was this proposal that the fins stretch up above the liquid level an superheat the steam but it is only a proposal. I'm not sure this would actually work and I don't understand how you know that this is the actual physical arrangement inside the Big Frankies. The photo isn't of a Big Frankie unit is it?

You are right about the BF internals. We need a 'Rossi says' for that.

I have noticed that, too. There could be easily an internal superheater. I think that he is also wrong about the atmospheric pressure in the plant inlet, since Penon said that the circuit has been opened only once in a while in order to refill the auxiliary tank.

However, the question how both a pressure differential and a surprisingly constant outlet pressure could fit together remains open. Steam velocity is also a problem. Even with a 4.5’’ ID pipe I get about 247 km/h for 1500 kg steam/h – maybe somebody wants to check. 100% steam would not have been required, but even an insignificant mistake might damage the credibility of the report.

Indeed. Much more detailed than his first report having had access to the plant.

An interesting observation:

If I understood correctly each generator unit consumes between 1.1 kW and 2.5 kW for heating and other power needs.

So the Tiger modules containing 15 generator units would each consume between 16.5 kW and 32.5 kW. And the Tiger module containing 16 generator units would consume between 17.6 kW and 35 kW.

The total power consumed for heating etc would then be:

Between 67.1 kW and 132.5 kW if all units in all 4 Tigers were being used.

Between 49.5 kW and 100 kW if one Tiger is Off and all units in 3 Tigers were used.

If we take the first case this would be consistent with a COP of between about 7.6 and 15 if 1MW is out put. Which is close to the original specified COP for the device. And also similar to some of the COPs mentioned by IH in some tests on some device.

Curiously though according to the data the actual power useage was closer to 10 kW. And the actual COP correspondingly much higher.

One possibility is that the 1.1 to 2.5 kW refers to each Tiger rather than each unit but I don't think that is the case from the text.

I suppose this could mean a number of things but I wonder if it tells us something about "steady state" and "self sustain mode".

Could it be that in one of these modes (maybe for steady state) it only requires one of the devices in each Tiger to be powered. And the remaining 14 to 15 units are sustained by this single unit excess heat instead of requiring external heat?

If so could Self sustain mode be one step further when the units continuously sustain each other.

Or alternatively could the individual units work on a duty cycle and only need to be powered 7% of the time when the device is working in steady state or self sustain mode.

It seems to me this is how he has multiplied the actual COP up from 7.5 to closer to 100. And looks consistent with the data. And that the normal specified COP for the device is for 100% powered mode with no steady state or self sustain mode?

Could this much lower than specified power usage be further proof that excess heat must have occurred?

The alternative would be only 1 or 2 units in each Tiger being used to generate steam or hot water. I haven't done the maths for this yet but it seems to me unlikely.

The input variance is the difference between "powered state" and "self sustain state". Even self sustain requires power input, but at a substantially lower setting. 100KW/10KW their abouts.

Sorry, but everyone knows that Penon is a blabbering idiot as Jed (and DW) says so and so it has to be true.

IH were also very generous to him in not correcting him when he stupidly believed that this was a one year test as per the agreement (page 22 of 214-33).

He deserves to take all those independently calibrated pieces of equipment and put them somewhere dark.

It is an interesting thought that the high CoPs reported by the 1yr test are a product of the 'Tiger' (aka BF) unit internal design and the collaborative performance of the 16 modules inside. The inverse logic is that the 1yr test back up plant, with individual modules, was only capable of about CoP=6.

That would explain why Rossi was determined not to use the backup plant, if he could possibly avoid it.

It is noteworthy that when one BF unit came off line in the test, the remaining three BF units in service continued to deliver high CoPs.

What would have happened if the roles of backup and main were reversed? Would IH have accepted CoP just above six without a big falling out?

There are immediately obvious IP issues here. The backup plant with 51 modules was obsolete kit, with its IP exposed in patents and worth little. The additional IP of the BF units was the high value component and I guess that is what IH lacked (until they came up with the money?)

Barry West's testimony is that the individual-reactor units were shut down because they were shorting to ground and couldn't be fixed. So really, it is the Tigers that are acting as backups here after the primary system couldn't get off the ground.

An interesting idea that Rossi was forced to use the BF units for the test. Clearly, the Licence Agreement expected CoPs at the 10 level. The production of CoPs at the 100 level from the outset, as shown by the ERV report, seems to have started a train of events that ran out of control.

Yup it's interesting I've just been re-reading your past threads about the ECat from last year after reviewing this document. Lots of interesting stuff was covered back then especially your exchanges with Engineer 48.

http://www.e-catworld.com/2...
What was the maximum electricity input available to the 1MW E-Cat plant during the year long test?
Answer: 300 kW

If the test plant was running at CoP=4 (the minimum required for payment under the Licence Agreement), then the electrical power requirement would have been 250kW for 1MW of heat. Hence the need for a 300kW power supply. For 51 modules in the backup plant that would be 4.9kW per module.

The measured power during the test using the BF units was more like 10kW total, so 2.5kW per BF. From 214-33, as pointed out by BillH, page 29 contains a power diagram for the test. The 3-phase, 300kW power supply supplied only the main modules and the PCE830 power meter only recorded the 3-phase module power. The single phase power supply coming from the secondary supply to the E-cat supplied the pumps, computers, control boards & sensors, lights and data-switches.

You state, 'One possibility is that the 1.1 to 2.5 kW refers to each Tiger'. I agree 2.5kW per 'Tiger' (aka BF) as above.

Yup I think he found away to improve on the original configurations in the Tiger design by grouping the 15 or 16 units in 1 module to take advantage of some parameter maybe heat or maybe something else to support to process in this configuration.

To me it looks like the advantage of the Tiger configuration is that each Tiger is self contained and self sustaining in some way. But I'm speculating of course.

Since most of this detail isn't in the final report it's hard to say, but Bruce_H below did come across intermediate testing done by Penon on one of his site visits which indicated that some of the cores within the Frankies were actually powered down, i.e. they had no Current input. Interestingly Darden/Vaughn seemed to indicated that a subset of the reactors within the container might be used for "testing", but this isn't reflected in the actual test document as written by Penon.

Reference document 214-33 Exhibit 33 starting around page 17 of 36.
This document also shows much clearer diagrams of the steam and water lines than the one that appears in the final report.

Thanks for that document link BillH I have a feeling that some parts of that document could be a kind of gold mine if it can be correctly interpreted.

The powering of individual units in BF1 to BF3 is interesting...

Did anyone check out this site (seems to require an account)?

https://earthexplorer.usgs....

Some of the images are apparently free, for others you would have to pay. I am not sure about the resolution (Google StreetView is certainly better).

Coordinates of the address in Doral:

Latitude 25deg 48’ 55’’ N
Longitude 80deg 19’ 29’’ W

Document 167-2 Exhibit 1 makes interesting reading, a summary of Darden's thoughts from 2014.

From AR's deposition on 1-Mar-2017:-

"10 we could modulate the steam. Why we foresaw a
11 powerful heat exchanger at the end? Because I did
12 not know how much heat I was going to consume, but I
13 knew that I had to produce one megawatt power per
14 hour for the performance test"

So AR clearly knew 1MWth of steam output per hour was required for the test to be considered a success. Day 1 output power 2.03E+07 wh/d is 20300000 is on average 845.833 KW/h. Oops

http://www.engineeringtoolb...
Latent heat of Vaporization 2257.92 kJ/kg
http://www.engineeringtoolb...

total enthalpy change of water (70C to 103C)
= 30*(4.191+4.219)/2 + 2257.92 + 3*2.0267
= 126.15+2257.92+6.08 = 2390.15 kJ/kg

Penon records 0.9*2257.92 = 2032.13 kJ/kg
2032.13/2390.15=0.8502

When claiming 850kW in the test record, the E-cat is running at 1MW.
Note: Same applies to the CoP calc; a claimed CoP of 85 is actually 100.

Penon couldn't have been aware of the 1MWth steam output criteria then or he would have made this much clearer in the report.

197-03 in the court record is the ERV report.
2. Calculation of the energy multiple
This section explains the calc

Yes, I read 197-03, Penon assumed a reduced flow rate of 10% in his calculation. You were doing a reasonable job of providing an explanation till Ged got involved. However we don't know exactly how leaks effected the test. You might want to look at the results for the whole of Sept 2015 and draw a different conclusion.

The customer payment for power was on a monthly basis, so one might conclude the monthly power sum as the customers base for power received and payment for that power for calculation purposes.

The main party to satisfy with the year long run was Industrial Heat. Whether or not the exact numerical detail per daily power production had to be satisfied, as per real world industrial setting, that can vary with what a "real industrial setting" means. Some industrial customers can be sticklers for detail while others may require only a month to month fulfillment of production. This amounts to leaway between what a "customer" might have required and thus ought to have given Darden a clue of what to expect within reasonable parameters. As long as the customer and the ERV both conclude that the power produced and delivered was within error bars and in the case of the ERV report was very conservative, nothing else has to be looked at. Unless one is a stickler for details.

The Licence Agreement [1:] should sort out the confusion here. The absolute requirements are CoP>6 and steam temperature high enough.

There is a secondary requirement that is not absolute and that is for Rossi to use his 'best efforts' to complete the GPT. This is not an absolute requirement to run at full power. Hence a loss of one of the tiger units for a period of time does not invalidate the overall 350 day test.

It could also be noted that Rossi had a spare E-cat available that could have been brought into service if an output drop became lengthy; it was never used, apart from an initial proving run.

[1:] 215-05 : License Agreement
4: Validation of the Plant and 5: Guaranteed Performance
Plant consistently produces energy that is at least six times greater than the energy consumed … the temperature of the steam produced by the Plant …

Each of Leonardo and Rossi will use their commercially reasonably best efforts to cause Guaranteed Performance to be achieved, ...

Since you mention the tiger units, puzzle me this. How can the loss of one tiger as appears to have happened in Sept 2015 have resulted in the resulting configuration and output? you will agree that it appears that output was reduced by 25%? But the maximum number of reactors in a tiger is 16. So a loss of 16 out of 112 reactors isn't 25% This suggests to me that only the 4 tigers were used, so was Penon wrong or misinformed?

By the way, when I add up the current drawn by all active reactors on Oct 13 2015 (as noted by Penon) I get 92.56 Amps. According to my limited knowledge this corresponds to 19.24 kW at 120V with 3-phase current. This rate of energy absorption is much higher than I see in Penon's data at any other time during the 1-year test (which was often near 10 kW). I'm not an electrical engineer so I might have miscalculated something here

I always find this topic confusing because you are never sure whether people are quoting maximum or root mean square current and voltage [1:]. I remember it as a domestic 13amp plug at 240volts allows a maximum load of 3.12kilowatts.

Pro rata 26amp at 120volts allows 3.12kw
Pro rata 92.56amp at 120 volts allows 92.56*3.12/26=11.1kw
These are clearly rms. If the current is shared across three phases, instead of just one phase, the power remains the same.

[1:] http://www.electronics-tuto...
AC power :
Power = (Vmax x Imax)/2
for a sinusoidal waveform

rms (root mean square) voltage and current are Vmax/(2^0.5) and Imax/(2^0.5)

W(watts) = Vrms x Irms

Thanks! 11.1 kW is much more in line with what Penon normally reports for the ecat plant.

While we are on the subject of power supplies:
IH make much of the overlap of the FLP and E-cat power curves at certain times. They think this is evidence of fraud. I think that it is evidence of a second power meter for the E-cat.

I suggest this more strongly than before because we now know that there were big fans running continuously in the upstairs room for cooling a makeshift heat exchanger. I suggest these fans had a very similar power consumption as the E-cat. There is no room for E-cat, heat exchanger fans and air conditioners within the FLP curve.

Perhaps it does not matter anyway :-
215-01 : Joe Murray – Summary of Opinions
1: Comparison of Power Sold by FLP and Power Reported Absorbed
From 215-03 :
3: Measured average electrical power in : p258
Q. Do you have any evidence that the [power] data has been manipulated?
A. No, I don't.

So the power consumption of the E-cat is not an issue for the court, it would appear. What Penon stated in the ERV report stands.

I think you are correct that the fans running in the 2nd story heat exchanger room must have taken up a lot of power. And although I haven't been able to put a firm number on it is looking like a power need for the fans would be something like 4 kW ... which is about 40% of the ecat power needs. I think IH might know the fan a characteristics by now. Rossi testified that they are still on site and I think that there has been a walkthrough of the facility by all parties since then. Dewey Walker said that the attorneys Rossi kicked up a fuss at some points during the walkthrough and I wonder if this is one of the times. Rossi has been claiming that the fans are now involved in a secret project and could have been claiming that they can't now be viewed.

In any case the fan power seems to be unaccounted for by Penon (although he has no need of it if his goal is to calculate the COP). It is an amount that should add to the ecat absorbed power before being compared to the Florida Light & Power data. But this just makes the problem worse. If just the ecat plant is using more power than was delivered to the Doral facility on some days then the real situation with the fans on board is 40% worse than imagined.

I don't agree with you that Murray's deposition makes it look as though this will not be a problem for the court. Remember that Murray is answering the questions of Rossi's attorney here. The attorney is trying to punch holes in the argument by suggesting that Florida Light and Power may have made a mistake and by asking Murray if he has any direct evidence that the data have been manipulated. Of course Florida Light and Power may have made a mistake, but I expect this will be looked into before the case comes to court. And of course Murray doesn't have direct evidence of manipulation ... what he has is an apparent physical impossibility that needs to be explained.

A first 'back of an envelope' calc of fan power to shift 1MW of heat :-
http://www.engineeringtoolb...
Air @60C 1.067kg/m^3
Cp 1.009 kJ/kg K

Edit: You normally blow the cold air and not the hot; it is more efficient. Air density, like air pressure, decreases with increasing altitude. It also changes with variation in temperature or humidity. At sea level and at 15 °C air has a density of approximately 1.225 kg/m3. Miami is at low level but warmer than 15C most times.
Ht Tx = 321366 kJ/h = 89.27kJ/s. Fan power 6.16kw. 6.16kw moves 6500*6.16/0.55=72800m^3/h of air. More power needed to blow through the heat exchanger tubes.

Systemair Fan
6500 m^3/h @550watts

dt air 70-30=40C
Ht Tx = 1.009*40*6500*1.067 = 280916 kJ/h = 77.75kJ/s = 77.75 kw for 550watts of electrical power.

To shift 1MW of heat requires 0.55*1000/77.75=7.1kw of fan power. 7.1kw per day is 7.1*24=170kwh/day

At 250,000m^3/h, the Systemair fan would need 0.55*250,000/6500 = 21.15kw.
A bigger fan ought to be more efficient?
I wonder if they had speed control?

On LENR Forum, THHuxley (whose name I greatly admire) has pointed out that the 250,000 m^3/h figure is probably a mistake and that in his expert testimony Wong actually states that the fan capacities were 25,000 m^3/h. That is much more sensible and removes the overkill I was talking about. It seems as though they both need to going at once, however.

I agree with your calculations. This is a baseline because it assumes 100% efficiency.

Rossi (194-08) says he used a brand of fan called "Multifan" and Rossi's thermodynamics expert, Wong (194-6), says that there were 2 fans each capable of moving 250,000 m^3/hr. One of the fans may have been a backup. An independent way to calculate baseline power consumption for the Doral fan is to identify it, find its specs, and assume it was running 24hrs per day. It sounds as though this baseline may be higher than the one you have calculated.

http://www.multifan.co.uk/f...
Fans for installation in the wall of a glasshouse, tunnel or any other building where efficient high volume air extraction is required.
Summary of wall fan specifications

71cm diameter 900rpm 13,000m^3 600watts

Excellent! You are like a dog on a bone!

So if each fan is 25,000 m^3 capacity (rather than 250,000 m^3 as I previously thought) then 2 fans would need something like 2.4 kW.

In a glasshouse, the fan operates with no pressure drop in its circuit. If you are blowing through tube bundles you produce a pressure drop and that shifts the fan's duty point. In other words more power needed but how much is an unknown.

On a heat balance basis I have a crude estimate of about 70,000m^3/h. The calc is just above. Both points seem to push things close to 10kw.