Posted on 10/28/2011 8:34:52 PM PDT by stinkerpot65
Well, the big day has come and gone. Andrea Rossi's one-megawatt-capable E-Cat cold fusion device has been tested in Bologna, Italy; and the unknown customer, who ran the test, is apparently happy.
There were some issues, so it couldn't be run at full power in self-looped mode, but what it did do was plenty impressive.
It ran for 5.5 hours producing 470 kW, while in self-looped mode. That means no substantial external energy was required to make it run, because it kept itself running, even while producing an excess of nearly half a megawatt. Rossi explained the reasons for this in the presentation he gave, which I videotaped and will be posting later.
That's half the rated capacity, but it is still a major accomplishment for the device that was completed earlier this week -- the first of its kind on the planet.
Early in the day with a glitch showing up, Rossi said that they had to make a decision about whether to go for 1 MW output, not in self-sustain mode, or with self-sustain mode at a lower power level. The customer opted to go for the self-sustain mode. Nothing was said about the prospects of a follow-up test, though I would imagine that the customer will be running many tests to understand this gadget they have purchased, and that information will be conveyed to Rossi.
(Excerpt) Read more at pesn.com ...
The report is referenced elsewhere in a different thread. Thanks.
Not the perfect out of the bag test many had hoped for, nor the abject failure and scam some on this forum are staking every last shred of credibility and integrity on either.
So we should be able to keep them arguing for some time :) err... I mean how disappointing...
These first plants will cost around $2,000 per kilowatt to build one at a time, but once they are mass produced, Rossi expects the price to drop to around $100 per kilowatt installed.
Probably the biggest opening for skeptics will be the continually running genset that is probably rated for 500 kW (my guess), and appears to have been connected by cables to the E-Cat.
That's interesting.
A 500 Kwatt generator just happened to be running simultaneously. What kind of bull does this guy think he’s pulling?
Hummmm...
I don't have the details of the design, but this phrase shows up in every test report. Something is odd here; a 1MW system generating 470kW that still needs a little external help. How do they say this, the follow with the claim that is produces a surplus. There is not a surplus until the unit produces enough energy to sustain itself then have extra left over.
I think a more accurate headline would be that it was a partially successful test (at best). Because of a “glitch” that wouldn’t allow it to actually generate the 1 MW in self-sustain mode.
Also I think it would have been more impressive if once the resistive chanbers got up to temperature, that they stopped running the initial generators that got them warmed up. The reporter mentioned this and I think it would have given one less thing to possibly malign the test.
Actually I am going to modify my remarks. I didn’t read that the generator they had connected to it was 500 KW. I thought it may have been a much smaller generator. A 500 KW generator connected to a 1 MW plant that gets a ‘glitch’ and can only produce 470 KW - I am sorry but without a better explanation of the glitch and why the generator had to be kept running and connected to the E-Cat while the entire test went on, that to me is not a credible test. As an engineer I would not accept this, given what I know from this article, as being a completely valid and proven test.
Did anyone know how long the 500 KW generators could run on how much fuel they were filled with? If it’s 5.5 hours or so, I think it’s more than a coincidence.
Fro someone who wasn’t there and is running on nothing but surmise and assumptions, you sure do draw a lot of conclusions.
That is far from being unique. As far as I know, many powerplants use external power. For example, Fukushima depended on external power for safety - and when that power was gone, along with the backup, the reactors melted down even though they produced plenty of power at that time.
I have no idea how valid or scientific that test was, but from what I saw in photos the devices are pretty much made in a basement, by hand. I'm not surprised that some of them didn't work well. Rossi doesn't own a factory yet to make them.
Now that he apparently sold the thing, we should expect two independent developments. First, the customer may eventually tell the world what kind of a pig in a poke they bought. Unrelated to that, we should expect Mr. Rossi to learn from this experience and produce the next set of equipment for someone else. At this point he doesn't need to convince scientists and journalists anymore; his products should be doing that, at full steam.
“There is not a surplus until the unit produces enough energy to sustain itself then have extra left over.”
Your remarks are not very well thought out. The device produces thermal energy which is legitimate. the suggestion that you should be able to connect the output to the input and require no electrical input would depend on the “temperature” of the output not the amount of power in the output. One could legitimately produce a megawatt of power with a very low output temperature, say a 50 degree increase. Such a low temperature output may very well not be high enough to run the device, yet doesn’t take away from the success of the test.
Let me give you an example... I have solar heaters on my garage roof to heat my swimming pool. They produce about 40KW of heat for the pool in the sunshine. The pump that is required is about 1 HP. It is run from an electrical circuit. I can’t run the pump from the heated water even though the heated water is 40 times the energy that the pump takes.
They were just like the diesel generators that are on the building I work in. We have a battery-based UPS that has 10 minutes of capacity for the building (large computer rooms) and diesel gensets that can be online in 15-30 seconds.
“Did anyone know how long the 500 KW generators could run on how much fuel they were filled with?”
Well if it’s any help, the 5KW Genset on my motor home burns .75 gallons of fuel per hour. Assuming similar efficiencies, do the math.
But still, if the unit was running at 50% capacity @ 470kW and had a 500 kW generator for the test, then running at full capacity would be 1000kW thermal energy out from a system that has 500kW electrical energy in.
After the thermal -> electrical conversion losses when using this for generation, where are we at in overall system gains?
It’s not quite as simple as that... And I have no clue if this thing works or not. I hope it does.
The fact that the generator was running during the test is unfortunate. I don’t know if it was a 500KW generator, somebody guessed at that... A 500KW generator would probably require a 1000 horse power engine at least.
The fact that it was running during the test doesn’t mean it was supplying any excess energy to the e-cat. My guess is that they used the genset instead of the electrical mains so the amount of fuel consumed by the genset could be measured. In that sense that was a smart move. If I were an engineer working for the customer I would have insisted on this.
“I did not realize the output was thermal energy. Thanks for pointing that out.
But still, if the unit was running at 50% capacity @ 470kW and had a 500 kW generator for the test, then running at full capacity would be 1000kW thermal energy out from a system that has 500kW electrical energy in.
After the thermal -> electrical conversion losses when using this for generation, where are we at in overall system gains?”
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