Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Jed, this is dead wrong. This is obvious. Suppose you have *almost* full vaporization, not all the water is boiling, so water level in the E-Cat will rise.
Almost full vaporization is a degree or two below boiling. That's my point.
Eventually, some will spill out. What is the temperature of this water? It's the same temperature as the vapor before! No change in temperature will occur.
No, is it significantly cooler, unless it is boiling vigorously, and it wouldn't be.
Basically, if there is constant heat, flow rate can be varied over a considerable range and the temperature will remain constant. As long as the chamber doesn't run dry, temperature will be nailed to the boiling point of water. And as long as the flow rate is low enough that *some water boils*, the temperature will remain the same.
It would cool because cold water would be coming in replacing the boiling water which flows out. As you yourself say, it would be impossible to hold it right at the knife edge just above boiling, with just enough heat to keep it boiling while hot water flows out.
When you have boiling water inside plus some headspace filled with steam (like a mostly-full teapot), then you have some space to work with and you can increase or decrease the power to lower or raise the water level. This is what you do when boiling vegetables. When it is overflowing with a constant stream of cold water coming in, you can't do that.
This is the result you see in the data from several of the high-temperature flow calorimeters used in Italian experiments. The temperature tends to hang around just below boiling, because it is overflowing.
Close-to-boiling is a difficult domain for calorimetry. If you insist on doing this, I recommend reflux calorimetry. It is also better to increase the flow rate, which Rossi has done on some occasions. These other tests prove that the steam tests were right, as I said -- and as Rossi and Levi said.
At Defkalion they leave it in liquid state at all times, which is better in many ways.
Another certain technique is to turn off the power and have it run in heat after death. Julian Brown reported that Rossi turned off the input power for "a while." I asked him how long is a while? How many minutes and seconds? He did not know, but he estimated 2 minutes. It is a shame he did not use a video camera or write down the duration. It is hard to estimate, but I think boiling should have stopped, and the temperature should have fallen rapidly after a minute or so. I say this because the specific heat of iron and copper is about 10 times lower than water so there is not much thermal mass, and an immense amount of energy is removed by boiling. Boiling stops quickly when you turn off the flame on a gas stove.
If it continues boiling for 5 minutes without input I am sure that would be proof of anomalous heat. I did a test boiling 2 L of water the other day in a pot with a glass cover and a K-type thermocouple. Less than a minute after cutting off the heat the boiling stopped, and 5 min. later the water temperature was down several degrees and the headspace down ~5 deg C. That was the case even though the metal pot was pretty heavy and of course much hotter than boiling temperature.
It is a shame Brown did not observe heat after death for 5 or 10 minutes. - Jed
