At 10:43 PM 6/22/2011, Craig Haynie wrote:
How does Rossi control the water flow rate? If too much water flows,
then it would not all convert to steam and it would pour out of the
outlet. If it's too slow then the reactor would overheat. Does he
control the water flow by its effect on reactor temperature? Is there
some other sort of feedback mechanism?
It's been suggested that there must be such a feedback mechanism, but
it's not been shown, and it's been assumed in the calculations that
feed rate is kept constant, I think.
(There is so much writing on this that I may easily miss something.)
I've suggested gravity feed should be used, so that as the water
boils off, the water flows to exactly replace it, up to an easily set
level (by how you arrange the gravity feed.) That has not been done,
and I don't know why, since it is simpler. You just feed from a
reservoir, and the reservoir can be sitting on a scale. You add known
amounts of water periodically to keep the level constant. A float
valve could be used, but then there would be problems with the
influence of the plumbing on the weight. Simpler to just pour water
in periodically. There are cheap scales that will report over a
standard interface the weight, continuously.... With that, paying
more attention than is necessary to add water often enough would not
be necessary.
