OMG! Good news!

This LENR Forum development gives me hope for humanity. Arguments have been raging about the alleged flow limitation raised by Pace in his opening arguments on Day 3 of the trial, Rossi v. Darden.

This was based on the Smith Supplemental Report.

Planet Rossi has been loudly claiming that this was the height of stupidity, so bad that when Lukacs pointed it out to Pace and Bell, IH attorneys, before the evidentiary phase of the trial was to begin on Day 4, realized that their entire case was utterly hopeless and laid down and played dead.

Then Rossi went at it hammer and tongs in his Mats Lewan interview. Utter ridiculous stupidity!

There is some discussion of this issue on Pumped Up or Stupid Mistake.

Those folks on LENR forum decided to actually obtain one of these pumps and actually measure the flow rate. What? And give up all the fun of arguing endlessly and firmly proclaiming that the “other side” is not just wrong, but insanely-stupid-wrong and someone-must-be-paying-them?

Apparently, yes. Giving that up, we can hope. So I’m applauding, and commenting on this test idea and implications.

First, who is testing? The principal investigator is Alan Fletcher, who has a substantial history of support for LENR and Rossi.

Apparently a real name, real person. He is being supported by IH Fanboy, a well-known very strong supporter of Rossi, who nevertheless accepted that Rossi had … screwed up … business-wise, and was probably going to lose in the lawsuit as a result. Juries don’t like lies (or what looks like lies).

So, is this a biased test? Maybe, but that doesn’t mean that the results will be useless. Most supporters of Andrea Rossi (all?) are sincere, whether or not they are deluded. I fully expect that Fletcher will honestly report what he finds.

This is an essentially low-cost piece of work. The big cost is the pump, obtained on E-Bay. This was probably the pump. Fletcher elected to buy the computer-controlled pump for $324.99 plus $15.55 shipping. He said there was a non-computer controlled version (manual setting) for $50.

(My guess is that the manual model would have been adequate for this task; the possibility it would be materially different in pumping rate vs pressure is small.)

Fletcher intends to resell the pump when done, which is utterly sensible. My suggestion would be to offer to anyone who wants to confirm the work, for cost. Others could buy a cheaper pump, and this is the point, in fact: this work should be easy to confirm. Easier than arguing endlessly.

This doesn’t require fund-raising, generally, Fletcher is putting the pump on a credit card and will have time to pay it off, IHFB has offered to cover any expenses.

Some buzz around this:

Dewey Weaver wrote on LF:

WCG – I’ll leave you with something to ponder. A specific metering pump was designed to deliver strokes per minute with a specific diaphragm capacity and as a result, it is impossible a particular pump to go much above capacity, pressure independent.

Pace nailed it and there is an affidavit available to that effect in case anyone wants to get back in front of a judge but I digress.

Dewey makes statements that may not be immediately verifiable. However, the basic argument here appears sound. That IH just might have obtained an affidavit (from the manufacturer) before committing to this piece of theater in court is plausible. After all, Jones Day, etc.

Dewey, in my experience, when reporting fact, has been reliable. And opinion is not fact, I’m careful to distinguish them (in myself and others).

If it matters — it may not — we might be able to obtain that affidavit. The Settlement Agreement, as I read it, allows IH to disclose nearly everything if they choose to do so. I’ll be following up on this.

IH Fanboy wrote:

Anyone want to purchase one of those pumps and give it a whirl? Would be good to know who is lying.

Well, this might merely show who is completely right, more-or-less right, mistaken, or cloud-cuckoo silly. I’m not sure this will establish “lying.” That Smith (and Pace) were “lying” is extraordinarily unlikely, but that some mistake could have been made is possible … even though still unlikely, especially if they got that affidavit and it establishes the point.

Rossi, as well, is so isolated and distanced from reality that “lying” is almost meaningless. What this could do, perhaps, is show that he can be utterly and completely and contemptuously certain, and be wrong. This still won’t prove that the flow was not as claimed, because “recirculator.”

There are layers to the nonsense. However, at least this could resolve one point, which is progress. Little by little, we go far.

Dewey Weaver wrote:

[IHFB] – true to form – an affidavit from the manufacturer doesn’t count in your world but no surprises there.

Aw, Dewey, didya have to say that? IHFB doesn’t have an affidavit, he just has a claim from you, and, to him, you are something like the Enemy of All Good and Beauty in the World. If we want to turn that around (do we?), how about …. tais toi, STFU.

If you can’t say anything useful, don’t say anything at all, and all that great kindergarten stuff. IHFB’s idea was excellent, all the more so because, if what you are saying about the affidavit is true (I trust it is), he is going to help us learn something that may help others to learn and is willing to risk some level of embarrassment. And good for him!

I would not be able to do this as effectively as him Fletcher. The loony contingent on Planet Rossi would be screaming that I’ve been paid, I’m biased, or a Muslim fundamentalist cryto-salafi-jihadist, blah, blah. Are we having fun yet?

So, then Dewey also wrote, in the Pump thread:

Calibration?

Were the Doral pumps calibrated? One of the possible things for Alan to investigate is whether or not pump capacity could be increased by tweaking calibration. If so, how much? But Rossi’s claim in the Lewan interview is about the pumps, generically, so familiar is he with them, in his mind. Calibration would be a small detail, basically irrelevant.

What Fletcher will do, I assume, in the basic testing, is measure actual flow based on two variables: back-pressure and setting, perhaps with setting cranked all the way up to maximum. How he will measure pressure is another issue. 0.2 bar, the Rossi claim, is 2.04 meters of water. This is back pressure, against which the pump works.

The setup could be a little tricky. I think of pumping from a toilet tank, with height maintained by a float valve, as is normal, to a high reservoir over a bathtub that overflows into a container I could weigh. The idea is to have constant pressure determined by the head, the height between the water level in the source reservoir and that in the overflowing reservoir. Get it all set up and running, empty the measuring container, and time how long it takes to fill. There should be no significant air bubbles in the system. Maybe better to run shorter than fill time and weigh, leave enough room to avoid spilling water.

I love it. This is basic science, discovering what actually happens, as distinct from what we think, expect, want to happen, or read in books and specification manuals or even affidavits from manufacturers, though…. Dewey …. I’d trust that affidavit, but trust and verify.

Still, I’d love to see the affidavit!

Many posts were added to the LF thread. First of all, this test will be checking the Rossi claims to Mats Lewan, and similar claims. I recommend keeping it there. It is not going to prove that there was inadequate flow for the GPT claims, because recirculation pump.

Someone suggests adding a recirculation pump, as if that is a defined thing. Useless.

The outline I give above requires practically no plumbing or equipment. The source reservoir is a toilet tank, and these are designed to maintain constant level. The pump itself can be at any level, place it where it is convenient, because the relevant value is back-pressure, and in a hydraulic system with water, pressure will communicate through the system; what is needed is that the backpressure, the pressure against which the pump is working, is 0.2 bar, or about two meters of water, and even if the line from the source tank goes down from the source, as long as the lines are full of water and the highest point in the system is two meters above the source level, the back-pressure will be the same. As long as you don’t go so low that water can’t keep the lines full (what, isn’t that about 10 meters at 1 bar?)

The receiving tank could be hung from the ceiling, which would make it easy to adjust the height.

Then, at the top end, a plastic line from the pump can be held under the water level in the top tank, which could be almost any container. Arrange it so that the water then overflows into a container where it can be weighed (or measured as to volume, but weight is likely to be more precise). If the receiving tank is above a bathtub, this makes it all easy, and bathtubs are often in bathrooms where there are toilets. It is not necessary that this all be in the same room, though, and those lines could go some distance. However, they should be large enough that flow doesn’t create its own back-pressure. Generous size.

Even simpler would be running at atmospheric pressure. The pump, at the source tank level, runs directly into the receiving tank, very simple. No backpressure from outlet restriction. This would still test the basic premise of Smith/Pace and the Rossi claims.

Rossi weighs in on JONP:

86Lorenzo July 20, 2017 at 12:26 PM

Dear Andrea Rossi:
I read in the interview of Mats Lewan
https://animpossibleinvention.com/blog/
that the water pumps had a capacity superior to the amount measured by the flowmeter of the ERV: is it because the pumps were redundant and regulated to give you the necessary amount of water?
Cheers

Andrea Rossi July 20, 2017 at 2:33 PM

86Lorenzo:
Yes.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

There is a problem because not all reactors were operating, so presumably not all pumps were operating (or the system would flood through an inactive reactor). However, setting that aside, and conceptually, the reported constant flow rate could simply be a result of metering pump settings, it they would pump this much and if metering were reliable at the low pressure (probably not!)

Rossi is not here relying on any recirculating pump or device. He’s underlining his commitment to the argument in the Lewan interview.

Not that he actually cares.

Update

On LF, Sigmoidal wrote:

(an excellent post covering the pump issue, I recommend it.)

We will know more factual data soon, I assume. However, this point is already thoroughly visible: Smith’s statement was not fully specified, not nailed down, but reasonable. This hinges (and Rossi makes it hinge, as does IHFB) on the usage of the words “maximum” and “minimum.” Like all words, these have meanings that shift with context.

A “fanatic” is someone who is firmly attached to an idea. We all have some level of attachment to our own ideas. Fanatics can be immovable. To them, to be wrong is unthinkable, and implications that they might be wrong are an assault on their identity. Further, because they often themselves have ideas about good and evil, and project evil onto those who disagree with them, they imagine the same in others, so Murray shows, IHFB claims, a “pattern of misdirection.” Yet that’s all IHFB’s judgement. The pattern is in his mind (which is generally true of patterns, by the way).

Rossi points to a usage of “minimum” in the pump user manual, as if this proves that “maximum” is directly and stupidly and totally wrong, end of question. Quite simply, he doesn’t look at the other side, and he just about never looks at the other side. The same value is called “maximum” in a pump brochure. The actual word used on the label means “dosing capacity,” and capacity implies a kind of maximum, but it also can be described as minimum. What is the capacity of a 1 liter graduated cylinder? Duh! However, can you put more than a liter into it? Sure, you can. A little more. Paradigmnoia [Sigmoidal], however, points out that if the dosing pumps are used flat-out, one has no control of cooling. This is bizarre.

My point is not that the flow reported was impossible, though it is looking like this may be the case. My point is that preposterous arguments are used to counter ordinary and rather obvious critique.

My point is also that language is fluid and that when we draw conclusions from what others write, we need to take special care to quote accurately. To us, what seems like the same thing, because of how we interpret it, fitting it into our world view, can actually be, if we have the actual words, quite different. IHFB has given us a splendid example that he has repeated over and over. Its latest incarnation:

IHFB wrote:

IH supporter: “Woodford didn’t make the investment because of Rossi. It was because of the other LENR players in their portfolio.”

Woodford: “Rossi’s e-Cat was core to our investment.”

The first aspect of this is the straw man IHFB sets up. He puts this in quotes, but it’s not attributed and the quotes may simply be rhetorical. However, the understanding shown in the claim is primitive. It appears that IH did not have other players in their portfolio when Woodford invested. The Woodford investment was used to engage with others. The idea of causation is also primitive. The Rossi investment was a factor, I’ve explained this many times, because it provided a hedge, it made it safe to invest in LENR, because in the (by then unlikely) event that Rossi hits the market, they had a consolation prize, perhaps billions in profits.

But then the quotation from Woodford. It’s only partly attributed, because “Woodford” did not write anything like that. This is what Paul Lamacraft wrote, when informed of the IH press release (before the lawsuit was filed, the one where Rossi’s response was to claim that everything was fine with IH, while he was planning to sue them. Have I ever mentioned that Rossi lies?)

Hi JT

This is clearly very disappointing, given that Rossi’s technology was a core element of the original investment.

Obviously, IHFB read this as meaning what he then claims they said. Key word here: “original.” What was “the original investment”? It wasn’t by Woodford, and Woodford never invested in Rossi technology, per se. IH was sold to IHHI, the entire LLC, and Woodford invested in IHHI, which was protected from Rossi claims, but did own the Licence, through IPH, entirely owned by IH. IHHI then explored other LENR technologies.

No, “the original investment” refers to about $20 million that IH invested in attempting to confirm Rossi’s work. Had Lamacraft been writing about Woodford’s own investment, Lamacraft would have much more simply written: “our investment.”

I have point this out a number of times, but I don’t recall if anyone has confronted IHFB on LENR-forum over it. If it has been confronted, then IHFB’s error strays toward lying. Elsewhere IHFB gets into a tiff with THH over “agenda.” IHFB acknowledges an agenda, and it is to ensure that the world does not miss the opportunity of LENR. Great. However, THH is making the point that if this leads to deception, the ends do not justify the means. Deception confuses everyone, and the world needs clarity on LENR. Clarity is the “side” THH is on. We may disagree on this or that, but … we can then correct each other’s errors, with patience and study.

IHFB clearly is a fanatic, though he has, to his credit, acknowledged that Rossi was deceptive. That’s a start. The problem is, once someone is known to be deceptive, nothing they show can be trusted, unless thoroughly and independently verified.

So that IHFB doesn’t continue the deceptive quotation, someone, please tell him on LENR-forum. Perhaps cite this Update. — or the whole post.

Update2

Report on pump on JONP:

DT
July 20, 2017 at 9:11 PM

Dear Andrea:
I tested the Prominent pump of the photo in the report of Smith and discovered that you are right: if you pump water through a pipe 20 meters high it has a flow rate of about 32.5 liters per hour, but when I cut the column to 1 meter it pumped 68 liters per hour !
You were right. Also in the data sheet available on the internet, 32 l/h is reported as the minimum flow rate at 2 bars.
Warm Regards,
DT

Andrea Rossi
July 20, 2017 at 9:48 PM

DT:
True.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

Vagueness rules on Planet Rossi. It is quite rare to see links to sources for claims like this on his blog. Rossi called the source document for Smith claims the “report of Smith,” and then people find the Expert Report of Smith and it isn’t there. This was, in fact, the SUPPLEMENTAL EXPERT REPORT OF RICK A. SMITH, P.E. and I’ve added a pdf page link so you don’t have to read the whole thing just to look at this one point.

Then, there is reference to a “data sheet.” That usually would refer to a summary sheet. This would be it.

It doesn’t say “minimum flow rate.” It refers to “capacity,” which generally would refer to an approximate maximum value. However, there is a manual. I link to page 64. This does say “minimum pump capacity,” as claimed. But what does that mean?

There is another document from Prominent, a data sheet. This actually says (my emphasis):

The gamma/L is a diaphragm-type, solenoid-driven, microprocessor based metering pump with maximum capacities to 8.4 gph (32.0 L/h) and maximum backpressures to 253 psig (17.5 bar).

Rossi’s point, made intensely in the Lewan interview, was that the description of the pump by Smith was totally stupid, because it contradicted the manufacturer information. However, what Smith said was close to this last statement from the manufacturer. Perhaps it’s wrong, and perhaps that data sheet is wrong, but this, quite simply, is not as obvious as it’s made out to be by Rossi (and by “DT”). The word “capacity” implies a kind of “maximum.” In the Lewan interview, Rossi made an argument for high increase in flow rate at lower back pressure, based on ideas that would be relevant for centrifugal pumps, but this is a metering pump, a dosing pump, designed to be much less sensitive to pressure.

So what’s the real figure? DT claims to have measured it. There is skepticism about this claim. First of all, using a column of water 20 meters high is … not easy. It’s been pointed out that DT doesn’t actually claim to have done this, but, in fact, it’s strongly implied from “cut down.” However, maybe. “DT” is a reasonably common author of comments on JONP. To have done this test, DT would have had to have had prompt access to one of these pumps. Again, maybe.

Stop the presses! Anonymous author on Rossi’s blog confirms Rossi’s claims!

Popcorn, anyone?

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

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

27 thoughts on “OMG! Good news!”

  1. I have been making the point that the structure of the E-Cat plant as it operated during the 1-year test at Doral has to be understood in light of the fact that only half of it was actually operational. The initial plans for the plant were to have the 4 Big Frankies working away but also then there were also about 52 smaller E-Cat devices that were also supposed to contribute to the output of the plant. These smaller devices were shut down after the first 2 weeks of operation of the plant and never restarted. Their pumps were also shut down and this is why the 24 pumps on the Big Frankies had to pump what seems a ridiculous amount of water.

    Until now I had been assuming that this was forced on Rossi because the smaller E-Cats malfunctioned for some reason. However it may not be so. I have learned from reading Rossi’s depositions that he did not put charges in the smaller E-Cats. IH did. In particular it was Thomas Darden who prepared the fuel for these reactors and had them loaded at a time when Rossi was in FLorida rather than North Carolina. In contrast, Rossi prepared and loaded all the charges in the Big Frankies (I think this was done in Italy before the plant was shipped to the US). Based on this it has occurred to me that perhaps Rossi was suspicious that IH had purposely loaded some or all of the small E-Cat devices with “control” reactors that were never intended to work. If this is so then the shutdown of all those reactors is not due to misadventure but purposeful — as a dodge by Rossi to eliminate from play any part of the plant he didn’t trust.

    This is just supposition at this stage. I mention it in case it fits with information that someone else might have. It may also serve to generate questions that could be asked of some of the leading characters in this drama if they are interviewed at a future date.

    1. Interesting thought. If some of the original E-Cats had dummy charges, they wouldn’t have worked (even if they would have otherwise worked). The actual data from the two weeks of operation, then, would have been of high interest, assuming that IH knew which reactors had dummy charges. Or none of them worked, because, as Planet Rossi has claimed, Darden didn’t actually know how to prepare the fuel, and Rossi did not fix that problem — which then guaranteed that the relationship would fall apart, even if, again, the technology was real. Paranoia strikes deep.

      But paranoia also makes a great cover for flat-out fraud. Paranoia is associated with other forms of insanity, including megalomania. I know of no reliable way to distinguish them (i.e., fake insanity from real, absent some “smoking gun.”)

      Identifying dummy reactors from real by the power measurements would have been a definitive test, and considering this possibility shows how flagrantly defective Penon’s “testing” was, the entire GPT concept was crazy ab initio. I’m sure IH accepted it because to object would have been to simply say “goodbye,” and they wanted, if possible, to actually find out: insanity or con artist or paranoid genius with something real?

      1. At this stage we are hardly able to investigate such a suggestion, mainly because IH threw in the towel when they let Rossi keep the 1MW plant. Who knows what they might have found inside the container, unfuelled reactors? unrepaired reactors? Penon’s laptop?

        I think it highly unlikely that there would be any of the 52 reactors unfuel since Rossi could have used this to claim that IH had sabotaged the test from the start.

        1. You are correct that we may never know. However, if IH had left one unfueled, it would have been very difficult for Rossi to claim sabotage from a single reactor. First of all, how would Rossi know? Okay, some reactors don’t work, suppose. He says that to IH, and IH says, OMG! Which ones? We will check our records!

          If Rossi tells them which ones, and Rossi provides them with performance data, and these reactors had no fuel (or different fuel, otherwise appearing the same) they then say, “Where do you want us to send the $89 million?” or something like that. (Better if there are a couple of them!)

          We already know of one accidental control reactor and what happened….

          Rossi apparently did not want to set up genuine testing, only a “magnificent demonstration.”

        2. I agree that IH probably wouldn’t arrange to put a dummy reactor into the Doral plant. But I wasn’t talking about what IH would or wouldn’t do in reality. I was talking about Mr Rossi and what his paranoia might make him do.

          1. I attempt to maintain two story lines: one is Rossi as a total con artist. The other is one that allows that he might have something real, or at least had something real (and maybe lost it), but his paranoia isn’t particularly “story,” it’s getting closer to fact. His paranoia will not allow conditions to be set up where his technology could be truly tested. If he had a large number of reactors being fueled, it would have been a splendid opportunity for a definitive test.

            If reactors, identical except for the fuel, indistinguishable externally, and observed so that sophisticated techniques for examining them internally could not be used, and then actual test behavior were used to identify the correctly-fueled reactors from control reactors, with a significant number of controls, that would be as definitive a test as I could imagine. The collection of individual reactor statistics, their behavior over time, and the like, would be far more useful than the Magnificent Monster Test Rossi had in mind. Blind identification could be done with no revelation of secrets.

            This has long been the case: outsiders can imagine tests that would be definitive. They never happen.

            (I can imagine a way to possibly fool such a test if the dummy reactors were not well-designed. One of the things that is necessary to run clear independent tests is operational protocol. It’s often skipped over as if irrelevant, but a technology transfer would include full operating instructions for reactor start-up. To avoid some detection of fuel difference due to, say, behavior when being heated, the startup protocol would need to be very clear … and fuel mixtures might actually be designed to vary fuel performance. There should be a “dose-response” visible from fuel variations.

            All that would be part of a full development procedure. Nothing like that has ever been revealed by Rossi and there are no clues about it in the documents in the lawsuit, that I’ve seen. Full information would not be just a formula, but a description of behavior as key elements in the formula were varied in concentration. For each element, a range.

            My friend that thinks Rossi has something real also thinks that he has never brought it under full control. Lacking a full exploration of the parameter space would be a piece of that.

            (Cold fusion in general needs this. It’s expensive research, painstaking. Edison’s “perspiration.”)

          2. yes, either rossi is a pure con, or is a machiavelic man who have dettered all his investors to benefit from their investment.

            I fully agree that we need edisonian structured investigation perspiration, like we will need afterward a WrightBrothers engineering perspiration…
            the point finally is that we don’t need rossi, even if e-cat is real. we need huge parameter exploration, deep mechanism investigation.
            My position is tha the best tool id PdD, probably dry cells, not optimised for application but for investigation, this mean not nanopowders but flat structures, just nanostructured as needed but the minimum enough.

            Engineering NiH nanopowder is like trying to make a passenger jet plane before you understand how does a wing works.

            let us work, like the wright bothers with a wind tunnel first.

            what is the budget required ? 25Mn$ is what I heard.

            1. As you may recall, Alain, I began suggesting a pure science approach in something like 2013, nailing what is already known and merely needs more and more precise confirmation. This was not particularly popular in the CMNS community, because it was considered a waste of time and precious research funds. I saw differently, and some in the community agreed with me and supported me. It’s happening. It is well-funded. If results are as could be reasonably expected — that was the point of doing confirmation rather than de novo investigation — we should be able to break the logjam where CMNS enters the mainstream. I actually want this to happen slowly, because the last thing we need is a rush of overenthusiastic and premature research, generating more failure, or more inconclusive resits.. It is time to start creating success, by design.

              My understanding is that IH has abandoned NiH. Many others have as well. Great idea. Didn’t work. There is enough evidence for NiH reactions that the door cannot be closed entirely, but … this is not a promising avenue, it was overegged by Rossi Fever. There is far more work done on PdD, so it remains a test bed. It may never be practical, but if LENR mechanisms can be elucidated, then they might be generalized or expanded into more available materials.

              Back up. We need very careful work, the best. Hopefully, MFMP will continue to learn and grow, and will fasten the loose cannons in safe places. MFMP may serve as the “outside investigators” who will look at work that might otherwise be ignored. That’s a basic community function. They must maintain high but genuine skepticism. Truzzi-style skepticism, Truzzi actually investigated the paranormal, he didn’t just sit around and tut-tut the stupidity of it, like the debunkers who took over CSICOP, now CSI.

              Rossi isn’t the problem. A toxic mainstream environment created a reflected toxic environment in the CMNS community, vulnerable to claims like those of Rossi. Sober critique, absolutely essential to genuine science, is buried in noise. IH succeeded in their basic mission, to find out if Rossi technology was real, in spite of the kind of obvious appearances that gave Krivit so much mileage. They did not “prove” that Rossi has nothing, that’s generally impossible, but they showed, conclusively, that Rossi is unreliable, and that any reports with his finger in the soup might be contaminated. That will remain visible. If Rossi has something real, he still has paths forward, and one amazing thing I’ve been noticing. In his 2015 interviews, Darden said that his goal was to enable Rossi to do his best work. The settlement agreement we have seen does exactly that. Rossi is completely free, now, to move forward. Engineer 48 was clamoring for the 1 MW Plant, and Rossi could now sell it to him, if he still wants it. From that, Rossi would have more money for his QX project.
              And anyone considering investing can read the Rossi v. Darden documents and make their own decisions. Humanity incorporates diversity, it’s a feature, not a bug.

  2. “maximum backpressures to 253 psig (17.5 bar).”
    I believe this pump model specific, the actual pump has a rated back pressure of 2 bar, just to be clear.

    1. Correct. The brochure, http://www.prominentxtranet.com/pdf/GammaL2.pdf#page=7 has this:
      “Capacity at Maximum Backpressure: (32 l/h) at (2 bar).”
      “Capacity” indicates a maximum flow for the pump. The value is a minimum tested value. As a metering pump, actual maximum flow can be higher because of error and leakage and, say, very low or negative back pressure. However, these pumps are designed for controlling flow, not for maximizing it. The “overflow” performance is a kind of defect, error. Smith would have been 100% correct if he had used “capacity” instead of “maximum flow.” The effect on the jury would have been the same, and then Rossi’s “stupid” argument would have been beyond “stupid” into “way-crazy silly.”

      Rossi seems to have a backup explanation, a “recirculator” If so, this would place control of reactor cooling in the customer area. There goes the “customer area irrelevant” argument. A tangled web.

        1. Abd – the Russians also got at “Paradigmnoia, however, points out that if the dosing pumps are used flat-out, one has no control of cooling”. Utter perfidy!

  3. Nice that they’re actually doing a test rather than arguing about the interpretation of the manufacturer’s data, and IHFB just went up in my estimation. However, these pumps are meant to provide a metered delivery and thus are designed to be reasonably unaffected by backpressure. Given that they’ll have a couple of poppet valves for input and output, if there’s pressure on the input (higher than the output by a certain fraction of a bar) the water would just flow through and the pump would contribute nothing to either the pressure or the metering. In that case (considering that the Grundfoss centrifugal pump is supposed to be in the same circuit, though it ought to be separated from the metering pumps by a steam gap and thus not have any effect) any flow-rate would be possible with enough pressure.

    FWIW, the graphs imply that the maximum flow they’ll push at zero pressure difference between input and output is around 37l/m, up 10% or so from the 1 bar backpressure set point. I presume that these pumps are delivered pre-calibrated at 1 bar so there will only be a couple of percent or so variation between individual pumps, if that. There could be an engineering reason to use 6 pumps if there are 6 water-paths through the system and they all need to be balanced as to water-flow, but running the pumps flat-out in normal operation does seems to be odd. If you needed more cooling to stop an overheat then you haven’t got it available. The pumps are thus undersized even at Rossi’s estimate of their maximum flow-rate, which of course disagrees with the manufacturer’s specifications of stroke rate and travel. The only way this could be exceeded is to add a further pump to make the output pressure significantly lower than the input pressure, and this does not appear to be possible in the stated fluid-circuit where the input comes from a tank, through the BFs, gets turned to steam, is condensed in the “customer side”, and then returned to the tank by the Grundfoss pump that is situated on the customer side. Of course, we only have a few descriptions of the circuit and nothing absolute, but I recall Rossi stated that the Grundfoss pump was in the JMP area, and it therefore cannot pressurise the input to the metering pumps.

    Like a lot of the Rossi claims, it’s possible to select bits that could be right if you are prepared to juggle the circuit each time. If you put the Grundfoss pump in front of the metering pumps then you could achieve 75l/h. On the other hand, you wouldn’t be able to say exactly what it was at any time since it wouldn’t be metered any longer. Not good if you’re trying to provide precise cooling levels, and also means you don’t need the metering pumps anyway since they’re only acting as one-way valves.

    Another question is why you’d spend extra for the computer-controlled version when all you’re doing is running it just as fast as it goes and expecting the backpressure to be low enough to achieve the flow desired. A rocker-switch on the mechanical version would do the same job.

    There is disharmony between the stated aims and the stated solution, along with some disagreements over the actual performance of the pumps between Rossi and the manufacturers. I suspect that the manufacturers will be shown to have specified their product correctly and that the water-flow was thus insufficient to produce 1MW of steam. But then, we knew that 1MW wasn’t produced anyway.

    1. Yes, it was an excellent idea from IH Fanboy.

      This is common in LENR study: there is a report, and the full report raises more questions than it answers, but the initial analysis is very strong: excess heat!! However, there is data that is not considered (and, unfortunately, often not reported or even seen). Example, the first Parkhomov report. He measured water loss from a large pot, in which a metal box was immersed, and the metal box had alumina cloth in it for insulation, and sitting in the alumina cloth was his reactor, with heating coils and a thermocouple on it. (First thing I noticed: uncontrolled position of the reactor, thus uncontrolled cooling rate. This was a quick-and-dirty design, by someone not particularly experienced in setting up LENR experiments, where a naive approach can set up defective experiments, making them not reproducible.

      He had a plot of the thermocouple reading, but did not use the data (except to speculate about some behavior at the end, after the heater failed). Instead, he looked only at input power and water loss. He also did not report the input power except for the last periods.

      I was quite impressed by Parkhomov, excited, at first. So I wanted to understand the experiment. I inferred what his input powers had been, as an even progression in obvious steps, and the temperature data matched that. So I could then plot power vs temperature. It was a very smooth curve. His results implied a rather sudden appearance of XP. It did not show in the temperature data. So … heat is appearing in the water bath without an increase in the temperature of the source? Seems rather unlikely. There were probably two things going on in that experiment. Parkhomov’s method of measuring evaporated water was by pouring water in to restore level to a mark. Quite imprecise. But worse, the design of the “boiler” probably made it bump, and water was seen by MFMP on the lip of the pot. There was also at a certain point heater failure and a strange “stick” in the falling temperature, seen as HAD. More likely, as the reactor came apart, the thermocouple could be exposed to hydrogen gas. They don’t like that.

      A sensible approach with Parkhomov would have been to repeat the same experiment. Instead, he kept improving it, such that results could not be compared. This is a classic cold fusion error: moving on to improve an experiment before the original report is fully understood.

    2. Simon,

      The Grundfos pump was used only once a week or so according to Rossi. I seem to recall that the JMP “chief engineer” Bass also testified that it was seldom used. So we can discount it as being required for normal operation. Rossi has recently come up with an account of a “recirculator” and this is what he says creates pressure on the inlets of the Prominent pumps.

      If you look at photographs of the rack the Big Frankie (BF) units sit in (for instance in Smith’s supplemental report), you will see the output tubes of the all the pumps in a single row feed into an insulated pipe running horizonally just above them. So the outputs from the from the different pumps are united into one flow before entering the BF tanks.

      With regard to the cockamamie design of the cooling system that we see: You have to realize that the plant as a whole is not operating the way that Rossi intended. Very early on just over 50 E-Cat generators had to be shut down. These were the all the generators not sitting in the BF units. According to Penon those generators had a lot of pumps associated with them. There must have been 36 of them because his specifications for the original plant show 60 pumps and we see 24 on the BF usints. With all of the original 60 pumps at work, each one would only have needed to pump 24 l/h to achieve the 36,000 l/day associated with 1 MW power generation. This is reasonable! It would have left lots of capacity for emergency cooling. Two weeks into operation, though, Rossi had to shut down all the non-BF reactors which left the 24 pumps on the BFs to supply the whole 36,000 l/day. So, you see, much of the fantastic reasoning we are hearing from Rossi arise from his need to explain, post hoc, how the remaining remnants of the original plant he designed could still achieve 1 MW power generation.

      There is irony here. And ego. I don’t think any contract Rossi signed actually called for 1 MW production. If, after the shutdown of about half the reactors in his plant, he had been content to say it was only generating 0.5 MW, I think life would have been much easier for him.

      1. A basic error would be expecting Rossi to be reasonable. Rossi decides what he wants to do, and then makes up reasons. He’s not the only person who does that, but … his is ordinary attached behavior taken to insane extremes.

        A recirculating pump could not create forward pressure for the Prominent pumps because the return flow was into a coolant tank in the container, at atmospheric. I originally thought that there was a main pump in the reactor, feeding the individual pumps. But I had not considered all the evidence. Even if there was a main pump, the individual pumps would be limiting the flow, and now it would be out of control, maxed out, as Paradignmnoia pointed out. The design appears to have been to allow individual reactor control, of heating through the heating elements, and of cooling through the dosing pumps. That made sense.

        But then all sanity was lost, and, yes, this may have happened from the shutdowns. Rossi’s thinking is astonishingly primitive. However, he selects his audience.

      2. Thanks, Bruce. That seems to make a lot of sense. I think Rossi has learnt from his error in fixating on 1MW by now, though, and finds 20W a nice round figure where it’s far easier to hide the heat produced (or not produced) and where the expenses are not so high in making it.

        Personally, since it seems Rossi read the water-meter and passed on the readings to Penon, I suspect that Rossi ignored what the meter said and just wrote down the calculated figure that it should have been. As such, working out possible ways of achieving 36m³/day with the available pumps is liable to produce paradoxes. On the few days when Penon was there to collect data in person, Rossi could either arrange for the meter to show the correct readings or simply tell Penon he didn’t need to look since it had already been checked by Rossi.

        Abd points out that Rossi Lies. Maybe we’re trying too hard to show that they weren’t always lies. The removal of the measurement kit “for manufacturer calibration” (that seems to have not happened) means that there is no corroborative evidence in existence for any of Penon’s report.

        1. “Rossi lies” does not mean that he lies about everything. It only means that there is conclusive evidence that, on a number of occasions, he deliberately misled the people he was communicating with. Compounding this is Rossi asserting what he believes that isn’t so. Those are not, technically, lies. It is, however, impossible to reliably tell the difference; a liar will lie in ways that create later plausible deniability — about which he lies. “I didn’t mean …” when he did.

          What actually happened? As you point out, Simon, the evidence that might have shown what actually happened was removed or destroyed. All with some “reasonable excuse.” Well, the rest of us have a reasonable excuse, then, to point out that Rossi Lies and to warn people about considering doing business with him.

  4. – Fletcher doesn’t have to test all parameter setting of the pumps. From photographs of the 24 pumps on the BFs it is plain that the big knob on the front that sets stroke length is set at the same value for 22 of them. That value is either 40% or 100% (ambiguous because of the design of the knob and the resolution of the photos). I vote 100%. The other 2 pumps are clearly set at 50%. In his deposition Murray says the the settings were on maximal when he viewed them on the plant’s final day of operation (215-3 page 291).

    – Calibration doesn’t matter. All that matters for this test is stroke rate and stroke length which can both be set at their maximal values. The volume of liquid pumped over a set time will be measured independent of any calibration within the pump itself. There is a software calibration function within the pump which attributes a certain pumped volume to each stroke. This is supposed to be set by running the pump for a set time and then telling the pump, through its front panel interface, what volume it just it just conveyed (which you are supposed to measure independently). I don’t see any of this playing a role in Fletcher’s test.

    – In his handwritten notes addressing Smith’s report, Rossi claims that there is pressure on the inlet side of the pumps. The pressure is supposed to be due to the recirculator that he has come up with. Here is what he says …

    (page 4, lines 7-11) “There was not only the pump system to push the water, but also the recirculator, so that the pumps charged water from one side, while the recirculator pushed water from the opposite side.”

    If Fletcher’s test comes up with about 42 l/h (my prediction) of pumping capacity at 1 meter H2O backpressure, Rossi will simply say that the pressure on the inlet side makes all the difference. I note that Rossi is carefully keeping the recirculator’s properties undefined and secret so we aren’t to know what that pressure actually is. I think this is to leave himself with some wriggle room to address affidavits, test results, etc. In the end, though, I can’t see maximal pumping rate being much dependent on input pressure.

    1. Rossi makes quite a point that the cooling water comes from a tank in the container that is at atmospheric pressure. This does not allow a pump in the customer area to increase flow rate unless the system floods, in which case it could raise rate by lowering pressure in the steam pipe. But that conflicts with the pressure readings of constant 0.0 bar(g). Murray first raised the question in Exhibit 5 of that low pressure, how the system could achieve flow rates as claimed with no pressure. It was then claimed by defenders that the pressure was below atmospheric on the other side of the heat exchanger (which was originally only in the big black box).

      It’s a complicated mess, a tangled web, patchwork, added piece by piece, ad hoc, as needed. A basic understanding is much easier. Rossi lies, so it doesn’t have to make sense. You can see him doing it with Lewan. Everything has an explanation. However, the explanations don’t match what Rossi previously said. The result of looking at all the data: something is off, but because of how the test was managed and controlled and reported, there is no data on which we can rely.

      Notice how arguments against critics are heavily biased: the word “capacity” implies a limit, a maximum. If we say a room has a capacity of 100 persons, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get more than 100 persons in the room, this is a maximum “legal” limit. With a pump, capacity does refer to a maximum, an approximate one, and the manufacturer data gives that in two different ways. They do call it “32 l/hr minimum at 2 bar backpressure.” However, in a brochure, they refer to this same figure as “maximum capacity.” So Rossi is ridiculing Smith for the same “mistake” that the manufacturer made. It’s not a mistake if one is attempting to engineer applications with this pump, as it is designed to be used.

      The issues Rossi raised make the question a bit more complicated than Smith and Pace implied. However, this is by no means as open and shut as Rossi claims, and the behavior here, again, shows that he is attached to outcome, as appearance, how it looks to others. He gives a flow rate and does not tell Lewan where he got that figure. Lewan doesn’t ask. Lewan does raise questions of interest, and that’s useful, but also presents Rossi claims as fact, when he is not quoting Rossi. His analyses show that he believes what Rossi tells him. He claims there is no proof of fraud, but then ignores what does amount to proof of fraudulent representation (which is not necessarily criminal fraud, and Lewan’s entire analysis is black-and-white, naive.) He misses the fundamental issue, preponderance of evidence, by dismissing all evidence on one side, which he doesn’t fairly report, because Rossi doesn’t describe the IH arguments fairly.

      1. I don’t think Rossi is saying that the cooling water comes from an internal tank at 1 atmosphere. In his handwritten notes against Smith’s report, I think he is saying the opposite.

        In point 7 on page 1 of the notes, Rossi says …

        “The internal tank never was designed to vent to the atmosphere”

        By this he means that the internal tank was sealed and that therefore the pressure from the “recirculator” would feed straight through the holding tank and be transferred up to the pumps. This is close to a position Engineer48 has been maintaining for some time and, indeed, Rossi may have gotten it from Engineer48 (though the converse possibility also exists).

        The internal tank couldn’t have been sealed and pressurized though. There was also an external water holding tank sitting in a large wooden cradle just outside the E-Cat shipping container. This is how extra water was introduced into the plant when needed. Penon and Barry West are both clear that this external reservoir fed the internal holding tank by gravity. That wouldn’t be possible if the internal tank was under any appreciable pressure so all this stuff in Rossi’s notes is bunk.

        1. Thanks. I’ll need to find it. Meanwhile, the external tank could still feed water into the internal tank if the recirculator were turned off. The idea has other problems. If there is positive pressure in the return flow, how is the pressure reduced to one atmosphere in the outlet pipe, and maintained at exactly that pressure (according to Penon)?

          We may never know what was actually happening there unless new evidence surfaces, but … the most likely explanation, to my mind, is that the pressure gauge wasn’t working, either broken because of overtemperature (as it was) or blocked, just sitting in a blind or plugged hole in the pipe. The removal of the gauge and piping at the end of the test made verification impossible.

          1. One thing I was saving for trial time, which is now not going to happen, was that the pressure gauge was supposedly send readings to Penon’s every 10 second, now if you look at the spec it says :-

            Battery Life • 1’000 hours continuous operation in Mano-Mode
            • 150 hours continuous operation in Peak-Mode

            Question, who changed the battery?

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