About vacuum and steam/water circulation

It’s been said many times on LENR Forum, and is even stated in the infamous Exhibit 5, wherein an E-cat-supplied steam pressure of 0.0 barg (by definition, atmospheric pressure) is considered impossible, because, it is claimed, the reservoir at the E-cat, into which the water returns, is open to the air, so it is also at 0.0 barg, so steam would not flow.

The contrary claim, then, is that the pressure at the condenser is below atmospheric, which would allegedly create backflow from the return, the water would not return. Something is being overlooked.

This does not mean much about what actually happened, which may be difficult to disentangle. For other reasons, the pressure of 0.0 barg, with relatively stable temperature, as shown in the Penon report, seems quite unlikely, so this is merely about the argument, not the fact.

There was a pump in the customer area, that has been revealed. So imagine this arrangement:

Boiler – pressure gauge — [application for steam] = condenser – pump – flow meter – return tank.

I think that would work. The pressure could be 0.0 at the gauge if we neglect the difficulty of keeping it exactly balanced at that (and that this would be a complex design requirement makes no sense — but at least it is not impossible.)

However, once a pump is introduced, it could also be used to introduce air into the return line, to cause overstated flow.

The central failure of the Doral test was lack of independent oversight. Rossi was in charge, and, given that, there are many possible errors and many possible ways, in addition, to deliberately fake a megawatt. If the power had been visibly dissipated, this would have been a verification of whatever measures existed of steam flow, but, of course, that was not done, the arrangement created by Rossi concealed it.

 

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

19 thoughts on “About vacuum and steam/water circulation”

  1. I was wondering about the
    QuarkX and A.R. Lawyers.
    Would the Lawyers ask to see
    the QuarkX?
    Would A.R. offer to show it to them?
    Or would it not be appropriate
    or meaningless for them to see it.
    Thanks in advance for any replys.

    1. Quark-X has very little legal significance. IH would claim that they have a right to any developments in the E-Cat line, and that Quark-X is clearly that, even if aspects are new.

      Quark-X is relevant to the case in that Rossi focused on developing it, apparently while running the alleged GPT. The “customer” for heat was him, basically. But he could have done that experimental and developmental work with a whole lot less power. He was not working with large quantities, only small quantities, and all his steam could do is raise the temperature of some material to 100 C and hold it there. So could a few thousand watts at most. Probably less than that.

  2. Ah, ha. Murray was extending professional courtesy when he called the pressure 0.0 barG. I recalled that correctly. Here is his deposition, Document 215-3, p. 168 – 169. This is also where he says the pressure gauge temperature was at too high:

    So in this system we didn’t have a measure of
    20· ·the steam flow rate.· We had a measure of the pressure
    21· ·that Mr. Penon provided, but he indicated in the final
    22· ·report — this was all before the final report I should
    23· ·note.· He indicated in the final report that the
    24· ·pressure was zero bar, and bar is an absolute measure of
    25· ·pressure.· So zero bar would be a perfect vacuum.· You
    ·1· ·would have to indicate that it’s pressure relative or
    ·2· ·pressure gauge.· So normally somebody would say bar G or
    ·3· ·bar relative.· And so what you —
    ·4· · · · Q.· · What did he report?
    ·5· · · · A.· · In the report what I saw was bar.· And so, so
    ·6· ·we know that has to be a typo or an error or something
    ·7· ·has to be wrong there.
    ·8· · · · Q.· · Well, it could be bar gauge or —
    ·9· · · · A.· · If he indicated it was bar gauge, then it
    10· ·would say bar G or bar-G or bar relative or — it could
    11· ·be a lot of things.· It was a, it could be a typo.· It
    12· ·could have been an error.· It could be a
    13· ·misinterpretation, whatever.
    14· · · · · · · So when we left the, when we inspected the
    15· ·equipment at the end, I inspected the volume flow meter,
    16· ·and I inspected the pressure gauge that he indicated was
    17· ·used for measuring the steam pressure.· That’s where he
    18· ·had that zero bar measurement.· And so I wanted to
    19· ·understand what are these devices.· And so what I did
    20· ·was I went out and I got the manufacturer’s information
    21· ·and the manufacturer’s type certifications to find out
    22· ·what their capabilities were.
    23· · · · · · · And specifically on the pressure side he used
    24· ·a pressure meter that was actually only operational
    25· ·between 0, or I’m sorry, 20 and 50 degrees C, but he was
    ·1· ·measuring steam temperature of 100 and let’s say about
    ·2· ·102 to 104 degrees C.· So the pressure sensor was not
    ·3· ·operating in its operational range, and the volume flow
    ·4· ·rate sensor on the condensate line was not operational
    ·5· ·in its, in its range.· The temperature sensors, I think
    ·6· ·they were fine.· I believe they were K type
    ·7· ·thermocouples, and they logged those to some type of a
    ·8· ·device.· But it was just a series of errors.

  3. It seems to me that a lot of these arguments, about how Rossi dealt with the 1MW he claimed to have produced, are really irrelevant. 1MW would have left a very large trail behind it as to where it went – it’s too large an amount of heat at around 100°C to simply go missing. You don’t need a nuclear engineer to understand the problem, since we’re dealing only with purported steam. There was no evidence of a large-enough (and noisy-enough) system that would have dissipated that amount of heat. THH’s and Paradigmnoia’s calculations on the heat-exchanger (that magically appeared in Rossi’s explanation but no-one saw or photographed it) show a maximum possible of around 200kW going out through the removed window-panes, but that would have been remarked on by passers-by and would likely have killed the trees in the airstream. I see the lack of an evidence-trail for where that 1MW went as being an insuperable problem for Rossi.

    The very small variations in measured temperature (around 103.8 to 104.2°C) would not be achievable without a slight increase over atmospheric pressure and an indeterminate amount of phase-change between water and steam. That implies a small head of water supplying the pressure over atmospheric, and that the variations in temperature (if not experimental error) would be caused either by a variation of that head or that the barometric pressure varied. The energy supplied was thus sufficient to boil some of the water flow but not all of it.

    Given the data from Penon, the only thing we can really deduce from it it that it’s wrong. We can’t say how much power was produced in reality, but only that it was a lot less than was claimed. We don’t know whether the flow-rates were correct, but it does seem pretty certain that the system was recirculating hot water with very little steam.

    One important point is that there is no diagram of the piping layout that we can trust as being true. The rust evidence from the flowmeter seems pretty solid to me (but then, I used to be a Failure Analyst and such evidence is pretty important) and shows that the flowmeter was over-reading by an indeterminate amount. That in turn implies that the water flow numbers were simply written down without bothering to read what the meter said. In turn, that implies that all the figures written down were probably not real readings but instead plucked from the air as being what Rossi wanted them to say.

    It’s maybe worth noting that with this amount of bad faith in evidence, we also can’t rely on any computer-driven readings. It’s not that difficult to fool a computer-driven sensor to give you the wrong data. Connect the thermocouple inputs to a voltage-source, and the flowmeter can be dummied with a clock-source. By the time anyone was able to inspect the setup, of course it had been dismantled and removed, as had the (claimed) heat-exchanger and the steam-pipes. What we’re left with is unsupported claims that smell like old carp to anyone used to measuring things, and without corroborative evidence that could make us think “well, it’s possible”.

    Though I think that Rossi perjured himself in claiming to have built a homebrew heat-exchanger on the upper floor, I don’t know whether that can be proven. There is an absence of evidence, but I don’t know if there’s evidence of absence – that needs people who were in that room during the test. To my mind, the absence of a sufficient heat-exchanger shows that Rossi knew before the test started that the heat was imaginary and that he wouldn’t need to deal with 1MW, but only the power he took from the grid.

    After all the discussion about how hard it is to dummy up a 1MW device and make all the evidence agree, it’s interesting that Rossi’s next invention is only 20W. Maybe he’s listening…. The denizens of ECW are now self-selected for crowd-funding that one, which may be useful for Rossi since big finance won’t touch him in future. If Rossi escapes jail (or even if he doesn’t) I expect we’ll be seeing a succession of new inventions funded by such people.

    1. Crowd funding will be short lived with Rossi in my opinion.

      Although I do not read ECW anymore, there were probably less than 20 strong supporters left. A good percentage of those people will not “put their money where their mouth is”. Even if 20 people did donate, it would not go far. At $100 each, two grand is not going to pay Rossi’s bills for long.

      On the other hand, if he escapes the countersuit undamaged, he can live very, very comfortably on the balance of his 10 million from IH. Since I personally do not believe he has anything, he probably will not spend much in his “continued R&D”. All he has to do to keep his loyal followers attention, is make posts on JONP and perhaps occasionally show a picture of a blurry blue light.
      It costs nothing to post about new partners, new customers, new tests and new designs. Posts about dreams of lighting up neighborhoods cost nothing. The faithful will lap it up like milk.

      However, even they will eventually fade away. I imagine that in less than two years time, Rossi will be a foot note in fraud history. However…… Mary Yugo has been stating this for 5 years on more! Who knows????

      1. It takes a certain kind of blindness to maintain trust in Rossi, given what is now public record. Rossi bloviating on JONP and Rossi sitting in a deposition are quite different. He is still holding on to certain threads, against all odds, but he has clearly admitted that very, very much of what he has announced confidently was complete fluff. Maybe there is some shred of truth behind it. I.e., maybe he actually talked to someone at Johnson Matthey about something. But he then presented this as an entire realized deal, a customer hot to trot, JM, and then, wink-wink, nod, nod, we can’t announce that yet and please don’t talk to them it will spook them and they will withdraw. I shouldn’t have mentioned anything. Heh, heh.

        I have long been trying to maintain the concept that Rossi might have something and is just quirky, paranoid, and, after all, aren’t these large corporations out to steal everything in sight? At least some people believe that, and there can be some truth to it. However, the more familiar I become with established fact, sworn testimony, actual documents, actual Rossi emails, etc., the more difficult it becomes to maintain the alternate narrative. Some of the IH claims, originally ridiculed on Planet Rossi, are approaching “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which is much stronger than is needed to win a civil suit. (But it may be needed for Summary Judgment.)

        Rossi lied. Again and again. That is, if Rossi is sane, he lied. The assumption of sanity also becomes very, very difficult. This has been, in fact, a stopping point for some on Planet Rossi. If he was lying, if the Rossi Effect was fake, he’d be crazy to sue Industrial Heat. For some people, apparently, that is a killer argument. If we begin with the assumption of sanity, then we are led into an upside-down land, with ever-more preposterous ideas being routinely accepted.

        The easy alternative is that he is a simple con, a crook, and that anyone who ever believed him was a crazy fool. The Mary Yugo Solution. The problem is that there have been some very smart people who believed him, at least enough to suspend judgment. The Mary Yugo Solution is rooted in very limited thinking, seeking firm conclusions with evidence inadequate for that. The Mary Yugo Solution rejects LENR entirely, generally, because it cannot understand and think outside the box. It rejects, in fact, a great deal of human experience.

        I saw in 2011 that for LENR scientists to allow any appearance that they supported Rossi was very dangerous for the field. I knew — and many knew — that Rossi was avoiding clear independent testing, and there was a “rational” reason for this: to discourage high-investment competition. If he truly proved that he had a real effect, the race would be on, with billions being dumped into research, to discover his secret. I saw that this scenario was indistiguishable from a true con. He would pretend to be a con, and how could we tell the difference, without, say, some clear confession? Behind all of this was the idea that he must have some sane purpose, but I knew, even then, that this was an unwarranted assumption, neglecting how real humans function, as to the extremes.

        I wrote, then, that a magician could fool any expert, if the magician could control the environment. Jed pooh-poohed that. Perhaps he recalls. This, however, is why we want, for frontier-pushing research claims, fully independent confirmation. It is far more difficult to spoof that, especially when it becomes multiple.

        1. You wrote: “I wrote, then, that a magician could fool any expert, if the magician could control the environment. Jed pooh-poohed that. Perhaps he recalls.”

          Yes, I admit Rossi was able to fool scientists more than I thought possible. Along the same lines, I wrote to Steve Krivit saying he was right about how bad Rossi is, and I was wrong.

          I do not know what happened at Lugano but it seems Rossi managed to play the scientists there.

          HOWEVER, having said all that, let me add that as far as I know, Rossi did not fool any scientists or engineers who visited the 1-year test site. I did not visit it. I saw a sample of the data from the test, and that data did not fool me. I could tell the test was sloppy and wrong, and it proved nothing. I did not have enough information to conclude that it was fraudulent. I said at the time I had been hoping Rossi had finally done a good test, but this was no better than his previous sloppy tests.

          Everyone I know who reviewed the data and the overall setup immediately saw the same problems I did, such as the numbers being too round, the temperature being too close to 100 deg C, and that heat removal must be a major problem if there really is 1 MW. One of the first things I asked the people at I.H. was: “What kind of ventilation does Rossi have?” I recall they just said, “it is inadequate.”

          Because I did not know how bad the test really was, right to the end I was hoping Rossi would clean up his act and produce valid data showing real excess. I signed up for Lewan’s symposium, still thinking there might be something to the claims. Something like 20 kW in and 30 kW out would be plausible. That would not present any problems overheating the warehouse. Ordinary HVAC could remove it. The problem was that with the instruments he used, 10 kW excess would be in the margin of error. You couldn’t even see it. Needless to say, it would not be difficult to install better instruments to measure 10 kW excess with confidence. As Smith said:

          “Determining and establishing the whether the system was flowing steam would have been easy to do, if the person establishing the test plan was interested in knowing that data.”

          Murray and Smith know way, w-a-a-a-a-y more about these subjects than I do. Yet within the bounds of the limited information I had, I think I independently discovered most of the major problems they discovered. I am not bragging about my abilities here. I am saying that these problems were readily apparent even to amateurs such as me.

          Let us take one example: the heat dissipation problem. I immediately thought to ask I.H. about ventilation. I know from practical experience that a 1 MW heat source needs heavy-duty ventilation. That’s the extent of my knowledge.

          Murray knows way more, so he set up and ran a sophisticated heat modelling program to show that the warehouse would get too hot. That is far better evidence than I could produce!

          Smith’s analysis was not as sophisticated as Murray’s but he had no doubt that: “If the unit were generating the amount of heat that Penon claims, and that heat had been left to naturally dissipate, no human could have worked, or even survived, for long in the space. Obviously, this temperature rise in the space never happened.”

          1. about Lugano, it seems Rossi was managing the test, and they did not follow it much,.Their report stating that Rossi just started and stopped, and they followed the test all along is simply … not matching reality.

            In English I think the term is “fooling” not “fooled”.
            To confirm, because this is tragic if true.

            I’m beyond furious, conditioned to the confirmation of that hypothesis.

            1. I’m still working on the IH MTD and the Rossi response, and what happened, factually, is becoming quite detailed and clear. There is now, in at least one case, direct conflict of Rossi testimony and other testimony, with the documentary evidence being almost entirely on the side of the other testimony, to the extent that Rossi may have perjured himself. Rossi has long depended on ambiguity in statements, and actually excuses making false statements as merely being an Italian “rhetorical” habit, i.e., presenting an idea as if it were already fact. I doubt, however, that in Italy factual representations, involved in business contracts, are excused; Rossi confuses a habit of florid speech with testimony expected to be honest and accurate. I am aware of the rhetorical habit he mentions, and, in fact, I use it myself. But, beyond linguistic devices which are used to guide thought and action about possibilities, I do not claim reality to what is only an idea, beyond it being a “real idea,” or, I will claim, a “real possibility.” By definition, a real possibility does not yet exist except in the realm of possibility, and in that realm, anything is possible. So this represents a choice. The true issue in business is whether or not the statements, rhetorical or not, creating erroneous impressions in others. Rossi very clearly, it is essentially undeniable, this is adequate for Summary Judgement, created and maintained the impression that the “entity” behind the “customer” was Johnson Matthey. Yet Rossi has affirmed under penalty of perjury that he did not. That could be a fatal error. It’s the cover-up, stupid. He has acknowledged the “rhetorical” tendency, using it to explain many deceptions, but this is no defense in a civil matter. If the statements created false impressions, they were fraudulent representation, Italian or not.

              The “Italian rhetorical practice” may be very real, but Italians are not fooled by it. Rossi was speaking and writing in English, to people American by culture, and a Florida attorney participated in this “rhetoric.” Any con artist uses and manipulates impressions, with greater or lesser levels of lying. A Ponzi scheme does not necessarily involve lying, i.e., the fraud may intend to pay, may have some ultimate plan to rescue the growing mountain of unsecured investments. It’s still a Ponzi scheme.

  4. Abd:

    Your summary of the vacuum/steam issues is pretty good, mainly because you leave a lot out. The more evidence that is brought in, the more things get confusing.

    It makes no sense for the (second, not on schematic) pump to be running and pressure to stay at 1 bar – unless… Pressure is 1 bar because the open water tank is connected to the circuit. That creates some other issues. We don’t know enough here, and perhaps never will. I’m staying out of this one. Rossi’s data is too contradictory, and the problem is we don’t know which of the readings are wrong, though we can be sure (the heat dissipation issue invalidates the Penon data) that some are.

    1. Thanks.

      It was conscious that I left a lot out. I just wanted to make one narrow point. There is nothing “impossible” about 0.0 barg steam pressure, an open return tank, and actual flow. It has been pointed out by Planet Rossi that condensation can create a vacuum, which would then allow the steam to move, but that then creates the return flow problem, hence a pump. If there is a leakage path from the input water to the output lines (such as in the “steam riser,” the system could easily flood from that pump.

      Again, Planet Rossi points to the, WTF are they called, sight glasses? at the reactor inputs, that, allegedly, do not show flooding. However, if the reactors are operating, boiling water, the reactors themselves might not flood unless they were not boiling. The system would not be entirely flooded, there would be some steam above the flowing water; that steam could even be superheated, but the claim of superheating is very difficult, because of the issue you have pointed out, stability of temperature. Saturated steam will have a constant temperature, depending on pressure, it is thermostatic from the rapid phase change. Superheated steam has no stability, and controlling the temperature precisely would be difficult, and useless for power generation.

      I think Smith is probably right about flooding, and it gets us into some semblance of reality, i.e., it could explain the data as being clumsily reported, incautious, etc., but not actually total fabrication. I noticed in 2011 that the Rossi system water flow was designed in a way as to be balanced between the Scylla and Charybdis of boiling dry and flooding, he had fixed flow, with no float valve regulation. Keeping input heat and flow balanced so that the internal reservoir does not overflow and does not boil dry would be difficult. It could probably only be monitored with temperature, requiring constant supervision, adjustment. It seemed likely to me that, with a fixed setting, the reactors would likely overflow, and that the output “steam” would be a mixture of steam and liquid water below. (Not merely wet steam, which it would also be, it is very difficult to make dry steam with a simple boiler, and then, of course, the temperature of the steam will not be stable.) Stability was reported, and temperature elevated slightly above 100 C was considered to be proof of steam dryness. And then they used a humidity meter, deluded into thinking this could measure steam quality. The words “what idiots!” pop into my head. Apparently even very smart people can be idiots, in some way and for some time. We all should notice this! Maybe I should make some No Idiocy talismans people could carry as a precaution.

      What is truly dismaying are the scientists that made those mistakes and who never talked about it.

      To my mind, there is a way in which these are the most culpable people, in an overall moral sense. If they allow themselves to be represented as scientists, they then have a high responsibility to correct their own errors.

      Rossi is a lunatic scammer, quite a rare breed, I think he is literally insane, merely high functioning. This exists and I have met such people. As such, I can look at him as I might look at a zoo animal, dangerous if not confined, but not evil. I have been a prison chaplain. I don’t feel condemnation for criminals, as such, even murderers. They are merely like animals trying to survive. They will eat you, so to speak, if they are hungry and have the opportunity. But I love animals, I have a Norway rat a few feet from me as I work. Beautiful creatures, intelligent, and even affectionate (at least pet rats are, they are raised with extensive human handling from birth.)

  5. Rossi often fails to correct obvious mistakes and impossible assertions in his reports. He does this so often I think it is deliberate. It is a mind game, showing contempt for the reader and for the truth. It says: “I can get away with saying anything.” It reminds me of Soviet era kangaroo court trials in which people were sent to the Gulag for destroying a bridge, where the bridge could be seen undamaged outside the courtroom window.

    It may be as you say, but I don’t believe Rossi has enough empathy to play mind-games as you describe. It is not a contempt for the truth – he would not care about truth if it reared up and hit him in the face. For Rossi, the approval of his audience is all that matters – and people who do not approve are of no interest to him and marked as snaked and clowns. Truth just does not enter into the picture. It is why he deceives so well, for him truth and falsity do not exist, and he will therefore deliver one with as much conviction as the other.

    It is highly unusual for somone like that to be operating in a scientific area.

    1. THH, the above is confusing. Whom are you quoting? I would guess this is something Jed wrote elsewhere. I’m a little uncomfortable with complex conversations in comments. It creates monstrous messes elsewhere. If someone wants to engage in these, perhaps asking for author privileges here would be appropriate. One can create posts and pages, and then comments can be about the posts and pages. Pages are where, hopefully, material of enduring value may be created.

      1. I was quoting Jed, the post immediately above. Should have said I guess, and I’m not sure that on this site immediately above is a time-invariant relationship.

        1. You can refer to a specific comment by right-clicking on the date stamp, and copying the link. You could also attribute with the name. But I have not seen that original, even though I am looking at the blog comments page. I’ll look around. If anyone is going to participate here extensively, it will get much easier if they have author privileges. Comments do not require an account, and so I cannot assign the privileges. That reminds me to check for possible applications…. the system, as set up, doesn’t make it easy for me to see them, it’s weird, but I’m still learning.

  6. The Penon report says 0.0 bar. Not “barg.” During the test, people pointed out to Rossi that this is a vacuum but he did not correct the units. So, either he meant it was a vacuum (which is ridiculous) or he didn’t care what it said. Either way, the number is meaningless. You cannot draw a conclusion from an impossible number, or from a stupid error the author did not bother to correct.

    Rossi often fails to correct obvious mistakes and impossible assertions in his reports. He does this so often I think it is deliberate. It is a mind game, showing contempt for the reader and for the truth. It says: “I can get away with saying anything.” It reminds me of Soviet era kangaroo court trials in which people were sent to the Gulag for destroying a bridge, where the bridge could be seen undamaged outside the courtroom window.

    Rossi did not mention the pump in the customer area or show it in the schematic. I do not think he has commented on it. I doubt that was an oversight. I expect Smith was correct about the pump, when he wrote:

    “. . . one can see that the black box heat exchanger does not have a steam trap, but it does have a liquid pump. There is no way to stop the alleged steam flow and trap the steam inside the heat exchanger while allowing the condensate to pass through.

    The only reason for this unconventional piping arrangement is that hot water is circulating through the system, not steam and condensate. As has been shown previously, there can be no steam flow through this system because of both pressure difference and temperature difference issues.

    It is the author’s opinion that the water flow numbers found in Mr. Penon’s report were not generated by condensate returning from the black box. The alleged “steam” and condensate system was in reality a hot water flow circuit using the Grundfos pump to circulate the water through the piping and the water meter.

    In fact, there were two water flow circuits. In the “Feedwater Flow” section above, the combined output of the E-cat feedwater pumps is 768 liters per hour, which is equal to 3.38 gallons per minute. This flow was through the BF feed pumps, through the BF units, to the “steam” line, down through the vertical riser, into the return tank, and back to the feed pumps.

    The second circuit was from the E-cat “steam” riser, to the serpentine coil in the black box, through the Grundfos pump at the coil outlet, through the water meter (which was the basis for Mr. Penon’s “steam” output numbers), back to the steam riser, and back to the E-cat return tank. . . .”

    1. I liked your Simon Rossi Says idea on LF. No pump unless Rossi Says. One of the dangers here is in fixing on an explanation of a magic trick; real magicians (what is “real magic?”) will often create an appearance of a method, and then pull the rug out from under it, leaving the audience totally flabbergasted. They were doing something else, and what that is might be extraordinarily difficult to find. Or maybe it is as Smith says, it seems simple enough, and the flooding possibility could actually fool even Rossi. Rossi feeds his reactors with pumps instead of with gravity flow and a float valve, apparently. That is highly vulnerable to overtemp (too little water) or flooding (too much water). If the system does not detect flooding, there we go.

      Now, yes, the Penon report says bar, not barg, but even Murray assumed it meant barg. This was merely a sign of sloppiness. Remind me not to hire Penon to monitor my nuclear reactors. Sloppiness can be deadly there, whereas it earned Penon some fat fees with Rossi et al. There is a comment on LF where it seems to be thought that barg = bar minus 1. Someone should explain there that barg is differential pressure. 0.0 barg is, by definition and from how a barg pressure gauge works, atmospheric pressure, not a fixed pressure.

      1. You wrote: “Now, yes, the Penon report says bar, not barg, but even Murray assumed it meant barg.”

        I think he was just being polite, or offering professional courtesy. “Let’s assume this was meant to be barG.”

        1. Actually, what Murray did is what I would expect of a professional. (I.e. this was indeed professional courtesy.) The communication is interpreted through the noise, to maximize possible meaning. Literal 0.0 bar would be complete nonsense, water would boil at any temperature, and ice would sublimate.

          As you hint, he might better have written something like, “You give the pressure as 0.0 bar, but I assume you mean gauge pressure, barg.” Murray clearly takes it as gauge pressure. If it is true that this was pointed out to Penon during the test, it’s appalling that he did not fix it. Murray did not exactly point it out, he simply used the intended meaning, so Penon might not have thoroughly realized the error.

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