On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>wrote:
> > Right, that's what I meant. It is the part labeled "Reactor" in Higgins' > diagram, which is not to scale: > > http://lenr-canr.org/RossiData/Higgins%20Oct%206%2027kWreactorDiagram4.png > > > That device is where the power leads and hydrogen gas leads went to. It is > clearly the only source of heat, so it has to be the cell. Even if it is a > fake cell, it is still the origin of the heat. Lead and steel walls do not > spontaneously heat up. > > If it was the cell, isn't it much larger than previous cells? A factor >> of three or more larger? >> > > No, about the same. Plus there are three cells in this one. There is about > the same amount of active Ni catalyst. That is the only meaningful ratio. > The mass or volume of other stuff such as lead shielding is not relevant to > power density. > You refer to Higgins above, who seems to have considered the geometry of the ecat pretty carefully, yet he says in one of his reports: "Still, after viewing photos of the interior cooling water cavity, only about 10-20% of the mass can be identified and about 80-90kg of unknown materials remain in the reactor core that could be, to a skeptical eye, fuel for chemical reaction or physical storage (liquid metal)." So, while the core mass would be interesting, I don't think we can know it. The total power density, including the entire mass of the ecat is also relevant, since it all heats up, and can store energy. And at least we have some idea of the mass of the ecat, even if the output power is not well known.
