Pumped up or Stupid Mistake

Arguments have been raised on E-Cat World about the claim in the opening statement of Pace in Rossi v. Darden about the pump capacity.

What facts do we have?

As was pointed out by the judge to the jury in the case, lawyer statements and questions are not evidence. It is not required that a party make any opening statement. The case itself has already been stated to them by the Judge.

However, an opening statement is an opportunity to establish a possible framing of the evidence in the minds of the jury. Having some framework to hang evidence on will help greatly with comprehension and retention of what will be presented in the next phase of the trial. Pace’s theme could be summarized in a few words, “fake” interspersed with nouns like “customer,” etc. I’d better get straight to the opening. Both sides changed their opening statements substantially between their presentation in the mistrial and in the second attempt.

Chaiken on Day 1.
Pace on Day 1.
Chaiken on Day 3.
Pace on Day 3.

Pace, Day 3, the second go-through, begins with:

This is a case about written promises, and it’s about blatant lies. It’s about fake-testing results. It’s about fake invoices. It’s about a fake customer. It’s about high hopes that my clients had for technology and how those hopes 
were destroyed when it turned out in the real world the technology didn’t work.

He then starts into examples. One of them is our topic today, the pumps.

[…] in order for these magic boxes to work, the water has to get into them, so you have to have little pumps. You have to have pumps to bring the water into them. The grand total of the pumps that were working — these are — this is a picture of six of them. There was three sets more like this, so it’s 24 of these pumps. These 24 pumps together, working 24 hours a day, working as hard as they possibly can at their maximum can move about half a swimming pool a day, so less than 5,000 gallons. So if you’re claiming to us that you’re turning 9,000 gallons of water into steam, but it’s impossible for you to get 9,000 gallons of water into your magic boxes, that can’t be true, that can’t be credible, and that doesn’t earn you $89 million.

On E-Cat World, Engineer48 has asserted that this was Wrong, that the pumps can pump more than that. At this point, starting out, I don’t know the truth on this. I’m looking into it. From that argument, then, it is claimed that Pace decided that, having made such a Terrible Blunder, he couldn’t win and therefore advised Darden to settle (and Planet Rossi tends to think that Rossi got some big cash settlement.) However, if this was an error, that’s all. There errors in both Opening Statements. This one, at least, is based on expert testimony (which can also be wrong, and IH could simply decide to not pursue it in the evidentiary phase, they had many other situations to present with very strong evidence, such as “fake customer” and “fake invoices” (even if they were not, technically, invoices, but invoice requests, reports of power from JMP via Johnson, purportedly independent measurements of energy delivered.)

I thought the basis for the Pace claim was the Smith deposition. I did not find it there. Okay, the Smith Expert Report.  No. The Smith Supplemental Report. Bingo.

As the closeup [of the pump label] show[s], each pump has a maximum capacity of 32 liters per hour. Dosierleistung is translated as dosing rate, or maximum flow. The maximum flow rate for all 24 feed pumps is: 

l/h = 24 x 32 l/h = 768 liters per hour

Since a liter of water nominally weighs a kilogram, the mass output is:
kg/h = 768 l/h x 1 kg/l = 768 kg/h

A kilogram of water coming into a boiler equals a kilogram of steam leaving a boiler. A kg of water is a kg of steam. The BF’s cannot put out more steam than incoming water – no matter what the reactors may
or may not have been doing. Therefore, the maximum steam output of all four BF units combined is 768 kilograms per hour. […]

That is 18,423 kilograms per day. Roughly half of the reported flow.

The Penon report stated flow with astonishing uniformity as 36,000 kg/day. It does talk about this as a rounded-off figure. What this actually means, however, is that the actual flow meter readings were not entered into the Penon report spreadsheet, but an approximate number was entered. The flow meter did read in multiples of 1000 kg/hr; it was not a good flow meter for the job, a point that has been made by many, it was too insensitive. (It was operating below rated flow. It does have means of measuring with higher resolution, but those dials were blocked by how the meter was actually used.) If actual reading were entered, it might normally be “36,” but would vary, depending on the exact actual rate. I.e., if the actual rate were higher than 36, some days it would read 37. Etc.

(Looking today, I see some variation in the number in the Penon report, so the above could be misleading, I may revisit this.)

Engineer 48 claims this is error, that the meter can pump more than that “rated flow.” But these are metering pumps. They are designed to pump a fixed volume (not mass, by the way, and the label spec is in liters/hr.) This is the technical specification page for model 0232. 

That water flow was based on metering pumps would tend to explain a fixed overall flow rate. But the idea of 24 pumps was based on all 4 BF reactor units operating. They weren’t. Reactors were shut down when heating elements failed, in particular. Leakage may also have been a cause. One of the claims in explaining continued Plant performance during power outages was that the heating continued by “self-sustain,” and that the heating caused flow (which it could), but … the system was leaky, causing problems with this. The whole setup was Mickey-Mouse.

What was the maximum flow with these pumps? Here is the full manual for the Gamma-L pump, model 0232.

On ECW, GiveADogABone:

An IH lawyer did repeat a falsehood from Smith within minutes of the trial starting. He repeated a Smith falsehood in his opening remarks to the jury. The falsehood was :-

‘ The amount of water that Rossi claimed the E-Cat machines were turning into steam each day — about 9,000 gallons — was impossible, because at most, the pumps available there could pump only 5,000 gallons of water per day [1:]’

Rossi’s legal team would have picked up the falsehood as it was said. The 48 minute long court drama the following day was the result. The result: trial collapse. Which side had the bargaining power in the resulting settlement?

As to engineering falsehood, that’s what we are looking it. It is not an established thing. Nor has contradiction been established. I will get to that. But as to the claim that this resulted in the “drama” the next day, that’s total bullocks. The mistrial was due to jurors bailing out, they lost too many, so they needed to start over.

GiveADogABone then has

2: The falsehood: Max output is 32 liters per hour – Smith quote from 248-6: page 31

3: The reason: “When metering at atmospheric pressure the pump can achieve several times the stated feed rate.”

A page is shown from “An Overview of Solenoid-Driven Pumps.” There are users who have a habit of using images to present what would more properly be text. It becomes difficult to quote, and a URL was not given to allow determining context. I could not find that page on the Prominent site. However, why would a metering pump read above the “stated feed rate”? What is the “stated feed rate”? That is an odd usage if they meant the “stated maximum feed.” I conclude that this means the reading on the face of the pump, particularly at low feed rates. And why does the pump do that? Isn’t this defeating the purpose of a metering pump?

This is describing a failure mode. I did not find a clear explanation of this, reviewing the manual. However, there is a 2 bar specification on the pump label. That would be adequate back pressure to prevent overflow, i.e., water leaking through the pump from positive pressure, the output being at lower pressure than the input. Then the question would be how much flow would occur under this condition. My sense is, not much. The pressure would be low causing this leakage. “Several times the stated feed rate” would not be at the maximum rate, at that rate it might make little difference. To really know what is going on here, one would need to make measurements or find clear manufacturer specifications.

I notice that the maximum long-term temperature rating of the pump is 50 C max. It is possible that the return water exceeded this temperature, which could cause pump problems.

To me, this is a shallow indication of some possible error or inaccuracy, not the necessarily the gross error claimed (so horrendous, allegedly, as to totally kill their case, when most of the IH case isn’t about engineering at all.)

There are other problems, once when considers how a reactor would be set up. There are two inputs that regulate reactor temperature and heat output: the input power and the water flow rate (which regulates cooling rate and thus temperature. The reactor itself is understood to be at much higher than boiling, so there is an internal heat exchanger that then conducts heat to the cooling water. In “self-sustain mode” there is no control from input power, the only control would be from cooling. It appears that most pumps for operating BFs were set at maximum flow. Yet the number of BFs varied in the Test, declining with time as they failed. Maintaining the same overall flow would be quite difficult.

As well, the claim is that the output steam is superheated. The measured steam temperature is reasonably constant. That indicates saturated steam, not superheated steam, which would be very difficult to control so precisely. Saturated steam regulates its own temperature, depending on pressure. While the recorded temperature would seem to be above boiling at the recorded pressure of 1.0 barg (Penon’s error of “bar” is grating, but that’s a minor point), this could happen from one or both of two different causes: pressure meter failure due to operating out of temperature specifications, as that gauge apparently was, so the pressure was higher than stated, or the temperature gauge was installed such that it was heated by an additional heat source — which could be the reactor body. From what I’ve seen and recall, I’d go for pressure meter failure.

And then there could be a mixture of superheated steam and water. That seems to fly against common sense, but … a temperature differential in the pipe is possible. There could be superheated steam above running water, because the heat transfer between steam and liquid water is poor. If the “liquid water” is fine droplets, they would quickly flash-boil, cooling the steam, but not enough to condense it if the superheating is major. But if they are liquid, the surface area available for heat transfer would be low compared to volume. Running water in that steam pipe is possible, and that is why the removal of steam traps is considered important.

I will watch for commentary on this issue and intend to correct errors here or incorporate additional arguments.

Why is this important?

Well, it’s not really very important; however, there are those claiming that the Smith claim about the pumps was So Stupid that this is why IH agreed to settle with Rossi, presumably dumping a large volume of cash on him to quiet him.

I’ve written a fair amount on this issue on E-Cat World, but this is the basic point I have in mind. I do not have certainty that what Smith claimed is fully valid. My reading of Smith, though, is that he is a competent and engaging engineer and will be seen as that by a jury, it would take strong proof in another direction to reverse that. This does not mean that I think all of Smith’s arguments were sound, and anyone can make mistakes. Nevertheless, Smith is smart and engaging, with a sense of humor, which can make a big difference with a jury.

The Pace Opening Statement was designed to create a context for the jury, a way to organize all the evidence they were going to see. The Pace theme of “fake” was easy to understand and remember, and I know that in some cases, evidence of some kind of deception was overwhelming, I’m thinking specifically of the “fake customer” allegations. Basically, to my friends on Planet Rossi, I say, “Get over it. Your man screwed up.” People screw up. Even geniuses screw up. I screw up. Saints screw up. (You think saints are perfect? No wonder you have trouble following the path they have laid out! Sainthood starts with being human, this is an ancient understanding.)

The flow meter claims were very simple to explain. Pace did it with “swimming pools.” The math was simple, basically 1500 > 756. However, if Pace, following Smith, was wrong, this was only a very small part of the IH theme, just an easy one to present when you have a few minutes.

The “evidence” being presented on E-Cat World about this is a shaky interpretation of a line in an “overview” document produced by Prominent, the pump maker. This is far from expert testimony, and would not be admissible evidence.

I will be looking at the case documents, but I don’t think that this argument, which was late — it was in the addendum to the Smith Expert Report, issued after he visited the Plant — is covered by response.

What would Wong, the Rossi expert say? Let’s put it this way: I don’t think he would rely on that offhand comment from Prominent and the way it was parsed on ECW, but would consider how these pumps operate and would look at the data available, and would either say that Smith was more or less right on this point, or that the matter could not be decided without actually testing the pumps under Plant operating conditions. And it was probably too late to do all that.

So the jury would very possibly be looking at what we can look at, and how would a jury decide?

Bottom line, to support the IH narrative, they only had to decide that something is fishy about the test results. This pump claim is not part of the IH “fraudulent inducement” claim, that’s much more about the “fake customer,” about which there is a pile of direct evidence already admitted.

Some people want to know “who won?”

For me, that’s simple to decide. We won.

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

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

23 thoughts on “Pumped up or Stupid Mistake”

  1. Simon,

    I like to solve puzzles. This is one and I am getting some pleasure from thinking about it. Also, unlike the mythical heat exchanger, the actual E-Cat plant with its pumps and plumbing is still sitting there (although I don’t know for how much longer). It is just possible that more information will come out.

    The reason I don’t feel that the flow meter readings are totally made up is that Penon says that during his infrequent visits to the Doral site he checked the cumulated reading showing on the face of the flowmeter against figure Rossi had last reported. He says it matched and I believe him. So there is a once-every-4-months reality check on the total pumped volume. One has to come up with scenarios constrained by those checkpoints.

    1. Bruce – in case it’s not obvious, I’m not disparaging your solutions to the puzzle or your approach, but I’m somewhat annoyed at the obstructions to real research in LENR that Rossi has generated by his antics. Any discussion on LENR tends to have a reference to Rossi and that tars the whole subject as bad science or fraud.

      I like solving puzzles, too, and paradoxes are fertile ground for getting new insights. Resolving Rossi’s claims, though, is about on par with solving a crossword – the answer is already known but not published yet. I find it more fun to go at problems where the answer isn’t known by anyone. I’m however also guilty of spending far more time on Rossi than it’s worth, and trying to change the beliefs of the believers using logic and evidence.

      I hope you get more information so that you can solve the puzzle to your own satisfaction.

      1. There are 2 big problems when dealing with remarkable claims. The first is outright fraud and the other is our ability to fool ourselves. I suppose it is true that in examining Rossi’s antics I am going after low-hanging fruit since fraud is, in the end, easier to prove and less insidious than self delusion.

        It has become plain over the last decade that a surprisingly large proportion of published results in all parts of science cannot be reproduced. We barely know why this is so, but I would suggest that results in fields with huge and obvious beneficial implications for humankind are particularly at risk.

  2. As far as I know there are no measurements of the condensate flow having a higher time resolution than Rossi’s twice-a-day readings.

    Here is Joe Murray’s testimony from his deposition (215-3, page 146, beginning on line 18) …

    “I know that the flow meter was not logged digitally because Mr. Penon and Mr. Rossi, as we did the exit interview that day, indicated that they had never hooked up that interface.”

    This appears to be only sensor of the ECat plant that was not hooked up to an analog-to-digital interface of some sort. Needless to say I think that is intentional.

    Looking back on the course of the Doral test, I think that many features of the Doral test as we now see them were originally necessitated as flying fixes to a tempermental system. The condensate flow rate would have seemed much more reasonable if the 50 odd small ECat generators at the Eastern end of the E-Cat plant had not had to be shut down after the 2nd week of February 2015. The pumps on those units, together with the pumps on the BF units, would have been nicely capable of moving the 35,000 litres of water per day needed for 1MW power generation. In that case, there would have been no need to fake the flow data and I think we would have seen a digitized record of condensate flow with high time resolution. Once the majority of the pumps in the Doral ECat plant went offline, however, an emergency fix had to be found because the remaining 24 pumps on the 4 BFs were incapable of circulating the necessary amount of water.

    That fix appears to consist of Rossi taking twice daily flow observations by eye then sending them in a nightly email to Penon. How hokey! It sounds so amateur! Rossi needed it this way, though, because now he can’t allow the flowmeter to be attached to something that would accurately record how much fluid is really flowing and when it is flowing.

    I find it probable that Penon’s initial arrangement was to have the flowmeter readings logged digitally every few seconds and sent to the computer he left on site … just like the information from all other the senors he installed. This was likely the arrangement in place from Feb 1 to Feb 18 2015. Penon’s official reports don’t cover this period, however. On Feb 19, the day after Penon left following his first site visit, Rossi permanently pulled all the small ECats offline (they had electrical grounding problems and were shorting out) and then altered the measurement system to the twice-daily observations we now know about. The first day of operation that Penon covers is Feb 24, almost a week days after the new regime was instituted. I’ll bet he was steamed when he heard everything had been so altered.

    1. Correction to my last post,

      The first line should read “As far as I know there are NO measurements of the condensate flow having a higher time resolution than Rossi’s twice-a-day readings.”

      1. I have edited the post to reflect that change. Because nobody had responded to it, I simply made the edit (but didn’t capitalize the “no”). Commenters here are welcome to ask for corrections like that. Indeed, I would prefer that users ask for Author privileges which would allow them to correct their comments more than the few minutes allowed with the standard non-privileged interface. Authors may also write blog posts and create pages. This will be given to anyone not expected to be disruptive.

        However, I will delete this post after a time, I expect, along with the request.

      2. Bruce – your hypothesis may be correct, but Rossi never made any preparations to disperse 1MW of heat in Doral. Either he knew he wouldn’t need to dissipate 1MW since he knew the various felines didn’t work, or he was incompetent in working out just how hot it would have got if they had worked. Maybe if he hadn’t had so many failures (shorting and leaks) then the data produced would have been finer-grained and a bit more convincing, but the lack of well-cooked people (or a big plume in the thermal imaging) would still have been somewhat of a giveaway that the heat wasn’t there.

        At this point, it looks like we’ve got all the information we’re going to get about Doral, so we don’t have a drawing of the actual circulation used, and even if Rossi does publish one (now he doesn’t legally have to swear it’s the truth) I doubt if many would trust that it was correct. What we have instead are several peoples’ ideas of what the layout was with some calculations based on that shaky foundation.

        The precise calculation of whether the pumps were sufficient is thus moot – there’s a large-enough shortfall that it’s pretty obvious that the pumps wouldn’t do the job of supplying 36m³ per day. Penon’s data is not compatible with the water-flow that the pumps would reasonably have produced, so either Penon’s data is wrong or the pumps used were not the ones specified. If he’s wrong on that, then there’s no good reason to trust any of his data. The whole house of cards falls down….

        There’s some amusement to be had in setting up thought-experiments that would produce Rossi’s claimed data, and thinking up ways to fool the measuring-kit to produce those figures. On the other hand, it’s even easier if the meters are simply ignored and the results copied from a list that Rossi supplied. There’s really no way of being certain which method was used, and all we’re certain of is that the figures are lies. The 1MW just wasn’t there. JMP didn’t do anything that needed that much heat, and had no product to show for that year of heating (and no employees who would be needed to have manufactured anything to make a profit on the power bill). However, I’d prefer to move on and leave the Doral puzzle unsolved – it’s not as if the truth would make any difference now, anyway. Rossi believers will continue to believe, and he’ll likely get someone to fund his next projects. I hope IH continue to fund LENR research, and don’t waste further time and money on Rossi. Since I saw the court case as a continuing loss for IH with little chance of any returns (Rossi sunk his money into real-estate, which seems to have a special legal status in Florida in the case of bankruptcy, I’ve heard) then I see the settlement as staunching that loss.

        Overall, I see Rossi as having wasted a lot of time and money for a lot of people. With a book, you need to buy it and read it in order to decide on whether the time and money was worth it, and if it wasn’t then maybe you wouldn’t buy one from that author again.

  3. All very good points, well explained. I think I now have a better grasp of what a metering pump is, thanks for the link. A couple of useful titbits I picked up during my previous scan through the files:

    The internal water tank was 0.2 CM which I assume means .2 of a cubic meter, 200 litres approximately.

    The external tank was refiled at least twice with 250 Gallons of distilled water at a cost of $500 each time, Rossi even billed IH for that! Seems like a lot of leaks to me.

    Now, if you were actually sleeping in a container for 22hr with a tank containing 200 litres of water at 70 Deg C you might feel somewhat uncomfortable, not to say roasted. Just another Rossi gaff.

    1. There are so many details to keep straight. I think if Rossi was spending the night, on occasion, he was sleeping, not in the reactor container, but in the control/office container. It had an air conditioner, if I’m correct. It might be nice and comfy. Or he could have slept in a front office. Whatever.

      1. Supposedly Rossi slept on site every night. He arrived each day in the afternoon, spent the night, and left in the morning. The others working there arrived in the morning and left about 5PM.

        I think it is important to keep in mind that Rossi was alone with all the equipment for substantial periods of time every night. Rick Smith, the engineering consultant hired by the defense in RvD has suggested that there were 2 distinct flows of fluids around the plant at Doral. Rossi’s nighttime schedule opens the possibility that one of these was an “innocent” flow pattern for public consumption during the day and a different, high-volume flow pattern driven by the noisy Grundfos pump that ran at night.

        1. Bottom line: Doral wasn’t a fully independent test. It was not adequately supervised. Yes. Pulling up the daily flow at night could have been done, rather easily. I think the flow meter had a sender on it, and this would probably have been much higher resolution, and flow could have been continuously recorded, so an anomaly like that would have been detected. So: Rossi arranged this test so that he had full control, and Penon took zero precautions against manipulation. If IH had accepted this as a GPT, they would have fully deserved to get taken to the cleaners. But … they didn’t. That was possibly the weakest aspect of the Rossi case. It was obvious from the beginning that something was missing. I imagined that the missing Ampenergo signature on the Second Amendment was a mere technical defect, perhaps just that copy. However, the Second Amendment required the signature of all parties to the start of the GPT. The Rossi Complaint did not alleged that such existed. I thought it was possible that Rossi would come up with some document in discovery where IH did acknowledge it. The most that was found, as far as I’ve seen, was a private communication, not with Rossi, where Doral was called a “test” pursuant to an agreement. That was not communicated to Rossi, so he could not have been depending on it, and Doral was, in fact, a kind of test. Not an independent test supervised by an independent engineer; the original GPT was to take place on IH premises. Six ways till Sunday, this was a mess.

          IH was prepared to pay Rossi if he had produced results satisfactory to them. When he refused to allow admittance to Murray in July, 2015, that sealed it. It was apparently in July that they first challenged “GPT.” By December, Annesser’s response was to threaten to sue them for “anticipatory breach.” The record is clear: all that “they never complained until it was time to pay” was Rossi deception.

  4. I have a couple of point to make …

    1) It is unlikely that there is a head of pressure on the inlet side of the BF pumps. Instead, these pumps are drawing up water from a holding tank sitting on the floor of the E-Cat plant. Thus, whereas the inlet pressures for the pumps serving the bottom BF may be near 0 barG (because they are at pretty much the same height as the holding tank), for the other higher BFs the pump inlet pressures are negative. This effectively contributes to the backpressure on each pump and should improve metering accuracy.

    2) On the outlet side of the pumps there is more backpressure. After emerging from the pumps, water has to flow through pipes with bends before entering the BFs themelves. This, by itself, creates a little backpressure. To be added to this is the water level inside each BF that has to be supported by the pump outflow. And finally there is the pressure from the steam that is being created inside each BF tanks. The internal steam pressure must be greater than 0 barG. It may be only slightly greater than 0 barG if we believe Penon’s figure for the output pressure of the whole plant, but of course if the true steam outlet pressure is larger than what Penon claim, then the pressure within the BF tanks would have to be larger too.

    3) The negative pressure on the inlet side and the positive pressures on the outlet side will combine to produce an overall nonzero backpressure on each pump. It may be small but it is definitely present and can’t be zero.

    4) The shortfall in total pump capacity may actually be worse than generally supposed. Apparently one of the 4 BF units had to be shut down at some point during the 1-year test. Certainly, by October Penon only saw 3 BF units running the whole show even though he was still reporting 36,000 l/d of water flowing through the system. On the face of it this means that one whole rank of 6 pumps is not being used. That leaves only 18 pumps to accomplish all the claimed pumping.

    5) The pumps are dealing with fluid at about 70C according to Penon. This is higher that the max 50C that Prominent lists for long term accurate operation. This may have caused the pumps to deliver water at either a higher rate than intended or a lower rate … I can’t tell.

    4) In the discussing how Rossi designed the E-Cat plant, everyone is forgetting that the end state of the system is not what Rossi originally intended. Rossi designed his E-Cat plant with 60 pumps, not 24. With all 60 pumps working, each one only needs to pump at 25 l/h to move the entire 36,000 l/d associated with 1 MW of heat. No problem! But Rossi had big problems with fluid leaks and grounding problems. On Feb 19 2015 (the day after Penon’s original visit to the plant ended), Rossi permanently shut down a large number of the E-Cat generators and their pumps. On that day the number of pumps dropped from 60 to 24 and it is on that day that the pump capacities magically rose from about 30-40 l/h to above 80 l/h! This is just another instance of the inverse relationship between inputs and power that Murray note in his report. Murray complained that the plant seemed to be operating such that as E-Cat generators were lost, each on magically generated a higher COP. In this case, as pumps were lost, each remaining one magically attained a higher pump rate!

    1. Thanks.

      I am not the judge or jury for this case. At this point, the case has entered an inquisitorial system, and I might be considered a clerk working for the judge. My job is to organize the evidence and arguments for the judge. I also have my opinions, which I state, but my true job is to create a structure that presents fact and argument, as thoroughly as possible considering my own limitations — but also as aided by others — for the ultimate judge to consider. The ultimate judge is anyone who needs or wants to know, and they judge for themselves. My job is to create the possibility of informed decisions, not to dominate or control them.

      Even if I have strong opinions.

      So if I express those opinions, people are free to ignore them; however, if I have skill, I will present the evidence on which I based my opinions, and I do my job thoroughly if I present as much of the evidence as possible, and allow broad participation in creating complete consideration of the arguments.

      It was really fun to be at the trial and to represent the entire public, not just those who would agree with me, and the appreciation and response from Rossi supporters that I experienced was specially gratifying. Thanks to all of you.

  5. I agree with Pweet. This argument over whether the pumps could have moved the amount of water required is a bit pointless. The actual water circuit used is not defined, and it’s obvious that the heat generated was very much less than claimed. The data we have been given is not internally consistent, making it impossible to draw any conclusions except that it is wrong.

    Unless you accept the invisible heat-exchanger (which also wasn’t heard and didn’t blow anybody’s toupée off) with no evidence of having bought the materials or having paid anyone to make it, then it’s also obvious that Rossi made no preparations to dissipate 1MW of heat, and so didn’t expect to get 1MW from the Doral devices.

    Some people who really really want Rossi to be telling the truth so he can Save The World (and all those children with cancer) will no doubt keep trying to bend the available data to fit their wishes. This can only be done by ignoring centuries of experience with steam boilers and thermodynamics in general. Heat is heat, whether it’s produced by burning coal or by nuclear processes – it has to go somewhere and won’t just disappear. It leaves a trail of evidence as to where it went, especially at the MW level. That evidence is missing, so the heat was as well. That’s really all we need to say about Doral, and the rest is wasted effort.

    I’ve seen and analysed a lot of frauds in the free energy/new energy/exotic energy field, and Rossi is just one more. Some of those frauds have garnered quite amazing followings, too, much the same as Rossi. Often it’s a triumph of Hope over Experience, and the lies being so big that few can accept that anyone could expect to get away with it if it wasn’t true. Of course, there are also situations where the inventor gets the measurements wrong and believes that they’ve found something unusual, and they can get quite a following too. Not dishonest, but still wrong. It is still possible that Rossi started in this way (since his methods of measurement are subject to large errors) but most of us, I think, see the bad measurements as deliberately chosen rather than random error. It’s possible that Rossi has had some excess heat in some experiments, but it’s also pretty certain he wouldn’t have had the accuracy to actually quantify it if it happened.

    Rossi is distinguished by the size of the claims he’s made, which are many orders of magnitude more than more-careful experimenters. He’s also distinguished by the size of the lies. I suspect he’ll continue with the sequence of abandoning a device he’s been about to mass-manufacture and moving on to a new amazing claim for the next device in the series – it’s worked well for him so far and he’s kept his income stream and backers (and kept largely out of jail). He’s raised the profile of LENR, but at the same time has driven a lot of research into replicating what he’s claimed, and since those claims are lies then the time/money spent replicating Rossi is largely wasted. Replicating Miles or Thermacore seems more logical – better to do good science and get some solid data so the theorists have some real results to work with, rather than Rossi’s isotopic analyses of spent fuel where we are pretty certain it’s been salted.

  6. Who would design a test rig which relies on the volume of a cooling fluid being pumped through the system being accurately known, and then use a pump which has a rated capacity insufficient to supply the required amount of fluid to carry away the heat expected to be generated?
    Who would use that pump anyway and then rely on running all pumps ‘flat strap’ for the entire year in order to achieve the claimed performance?
    Why would someone who does that sort of thing, think that the test results when being critically analyzed by others would be seen as anything other than concocted rubbish?
    In the early days of the Rossi /IH partnership, Rossi raved on about how brilliant the partnership was from the aspect of how he only had to request a particular piece of equipment and it was immediately delivered.
    It’s not as if metering pumps of the required capacity are not available. Why didn’t he just buy in one capable of the flow rate required?
    It’s far more probable that Mr Rossi knew that the pump he used was more than adequate to deliver the small amount of water which would actually be converted to steam, so that’s why he used it. I keep in mind that I am sure Mr Rossi always knew his amazing reactors produce exactly as much energy as he put into them. Thus, 12 kilowatts in gives 12 kilowatts out. That pump is fine!
    Even one of the pumps used is more than enough to deliver enough fluid to remove 12 kilowatts of steam energy from the whole ecat plant, and thus, that was a good pump for the job.
    What everyone is now arguing about is, were those pumps suitable to cope with a situation which was not actually happening?
    Well, it doesn’t really matter does it, because the designer knew that plant was never going to generate 1 megawatt of steam heat, and it didn’t. If it did, the factory unit would have been up around 80 degrees C, all day every day, even with a window and the roof vent open.
    If the test was being done in Alaska, with an outside air temperature of minus 20 degrees C, then it might have been possible. Still very warm, but at least possible with a fully open window and roof vent. However, in Doral (Florida) with morning temps around 24 degrees C and rising to over 30 C daytime temperatures, you’ve only really got a 10 to 15 degrees C temperature rise available play. After that, you cook the occupants of the building.
    Even at 40 deg C inside temp, it’s not at all pleasant. At 45 to 50 degrees C, it’s just plain unhealthy.
    Now, someone over on ECW is claiming the heat was disposed of by way of a heat exchanger on a ‘second story’. There was no ‘second story’.
    The photos show it was a mezzanine floor. The two are very different in that a second story has its own isolated air space, whereas a mezzanine floor occupies the same air space as the ground floor. It’s just an elevated floor space in a high ceiling area. If the air on the mezzanine floor is heated to 80 or 90 degrees C, the air on the ground floor will also be eventually heated to somewhere close to that.
    Rossi says the heat exchange on the mezzanine floor had large fans installed to blow lots of air through his heat exchange box. The turbulence from the output air of this box would soon mix all the air in the factory to a fairly even temperature, that is, very hot.
    Nobody who visited the site reported that the inside was incredibly hot.
    With an input energy of 12 to 14 kilowatts to the plant, you could expect an elevated temperature inside the factory, but provided there was a functional roof vent and an open window or two, it would have probably been warm but still bearable.
    None of the visitors reported seeing or hearing any heat exchange operating on a mezzanine floor. Rossi claims he engaged some chippies off the street to come in and build it for him. Giving how paranoid he is about others seeing his amazing technology, that seems very unlikely.
    There is no evidence of any product being made which might have absorbed the heat by some endothermic reaction. This was always claimed by the supporters to be where the heat actually went during the test, but now that it has been undeniably shown that the production of any real product was a complete sham, this doesn’t seem to have made any dent in their belief that a megawatt of heat was being produced. The lack of any real product now seems to be a matter of complete irrelevance to them and the main thing now is, were the pumps capable of pumping the amount of cooling fluid required to transfer the 1 megawatt of heat. They seem to be under the impression that if they can show it is at least possible, then their case is proven and everything is ok.
    It’s not ok, for the simple reason that none of the other pieces of their tattered jigsaw fit. The whole charade has been shown to be just another Rossi illusion.
    There was never any elephant, so the disappearing elephant did not actually disappear. Thus, no need to check the specifications of its watering bucket to make sure it catered for the needs of the elephant. Whether it did or did not is just a distraction. First off, prove there was an elephant.
    So far, all evidence indicates there was not.

  7. I think I.H. settled because they found our Rossi really was successful with the Ecat QX. and got a better agreement.
    I hope they get the joint statement out soon.If they
    state that they are still working together that has to be it.If they say they went there separate ways then not.

    1. What I saw in court does not match this theory. While anything is possible, that doesn’t make it likely. I cannot imagine IH trusting Rossi Says about the QX, after what they went through. If Rossi had set up the kind of independent testing that it would take to shift IH, he’d very likely be writing about it. He hasn’t.

      With the cases dropped, IH remains free to make any deal with Rossi that he would accept. Settling opened up the future for everyone. That doesn’t mean that they would rush to write him a big check or enter some new agreement without a lot more caution.

      Look, from the evidence in the case, in my opinion, there is very little reason to believe that Rossi had any real technology. But it’s not impossible that he did, or there is a theory I’ve seen from more than one LENR scientist: he had something and lost it. This has actually happened in LENR, something changes that changes results, and you don’t know what it is. You were lucky earlier on and did not understand a necessary condition and may not even have control over it.

      If you are an inventor and this disaster happens to you, maybe you fake a few tests to keep things going, out of desperation. That someone fakes a test doesn’t prove that they didn’t have anything, ever. However, it does create a problem: if it comes out, one loses credibility. It’s a very Bad Idea, but real people do things like this.

      I actually don’t know if Rossi faked any tests, except — he claimed to have faked a negative test with Hydro Fusion. Rossi seems to have been terminally naive on occasion. His idea of IH was that they were greedy and desperate to work with him. It did not occur to him, I’d suspect, how they would see that Hydro Fusion email. Surely they would just be happy that he preferred to work with them rather than Hydro Fusion!

      Instead, I’m quite sure, having a sense of these people, they put a clothespin on their nose and went ahead.

  8. Hi Abd, I’ve gone though this before and have somewhat lost the will to live repetition.

    Here is a summary. The pumps specify a max rate (at max pressure) and a max rate (at 1/2 of max pressure) which is 10% higher. They don’t specify rate at 0 pressure but all plausible mechanisms make this 20% higher or less. It is 20% higher if rate vs pressure is linear. Less if this is supralinear.

    The Penon flowrate data actually tabulates reduced flowrate. Penon (under instruction from Rossi, it is documented) downrates the COP by 10% via the mechanism of recording 10% lower flowrate than that actually claimed measured by the flowmeter.

    So the critical calculation is e-cat pump maximum versus flowmeter rate.
    The e-cat pump maximum is higher than the nameplate rate because of the lower than maximum pressure.
    The flowmeter rate is higher than that in the report because of the known 10% reduction.

    My note on this done a while ago
    —————
    The pump used was this one:
    http://www.prominentxtranet.com/pdf/GammaL2.pdf
    (The gamma/L was rebranded ECCO in Italy)

    The headline flowrate, written on the pump, is 32 l/h.
    The specification of this pump (0232) shows this rate at two pressures, maximum pressure 2 barG atmosphere and ½ of maximum pressure 1 barG
    (from page Gamma/l-7)
    2barG – 32 l/h
    1 barG 36.2 l/h
    What happens here? When working harder the pump slows down, but only a little. This is because less water escapes from the scoop each stroke, but the amount of water is still determined mainly by the scoop size.
    According to the manual a 1 bar reduction in pressure speeds up flow by 36.2/32 = 13%. 2 bar reduction will therefore speed it up by 26% – or to 40.4l/h.
    So even working at the lowest possible pressure (0 BarG) the maximum these pumps can deliver is 40.4 l/hour.
    The 24 pumps (6 on each of 4 big frankies) therefore deliver 969 l/h
    The Penon Report shows a reduced flow rate of 32400 kg/day = 1350 l/h
    Penon was instructed to reduce the flow rate recorded by 10% when delivering the flow values, so the flowmeter value to get this must have been even higher: 1500l/h

    So what happens here? The pumps can deliver only 65% of the flowrate measured, when running at full capacity. Obviously, either the flowmeter is wrong, or the system circulates hot water round a loop in which the water never goes through the tank and therefore is always hot. With this circulation not only is there no steam, and only the fraction of water going through the pumps gets heated. The rest stays hot. What is this pumped fraction that get heated? We don’t know. The pumps can be controlled to reduce flowrate, or even switched off for some of the time, and because of the extra hot flow the flowmeter will record the same thing. So we have no knowledge of how much heat was actually delivered by the ecats, and if they operate as electric heaters this entirely consistent with the report data.

    What we can be sure, absolutely, is that the report is badly wrong. Either the flowmeter is wrongly set up so that it over-reads (which could be by a very large amount) or the flow is non-standard with a hot water flow loop bypassing the e-cats. Again, in that case, the amount of water actually heated can be made as small as is needed to make the system appear to work whatever its actual performance.

    There is some complication from the vanilla calculation:
    (1) The reduced Penon flow rate. This actually makes the error bigger, so is bad for Rossi. It is set down in the report that this is what Penon does, so we can be sure the flowmeter figures given to him are 11% higher (from the 10% reduction).
    (2) The pump maximum rate. Unfortunately there really is an extra possible 26% flow from this type of pump at low back pressure when compared with its flowrate at maximum pressure (which is what is written on the pump)

    1. I ignored the 10% reduction. That was a bizarre thing to do; if one wants to allow margin for error, don’t garbage the data, just collect the data and use it as-is, then adjust the results by some percentage. The Penon report does claim the 36,000 kg/day rate, even though it then derates it.

      “Conservative” is not an engineering concept and it simply confuses measurements.

      What is really bizarre on ECW is that a statement in some Prominent document is misquoted in a way that amplifies the impression the writer wants. “Stated feed rate,” which would refer to the setting of the pump, on the face, becomes “rated feed rate,” which would refer to the maximum flow rate. RATED is even capitalized. That’s how they get the idea that Smith is Blatantly Wrong.

      In fact, the Smith claim may be a bit oversimplified, that’s all.

      However, that’s not quite all. You say that 0 barG is the lowest possible pressure. I don’t think that is correct. The issue is “backpressure,” which is directional, so it can be negative (i.e., forward pressure). With forward pressure, does the pump leak? If so, it will have a finite flow rate at a setting of zero l/hr and therefore an infinite error as a percentage of flow. I.e., a large error at low flow. But the pumps were apparently set at or close to maximum. It seems unlikely to me that there would be a large error (the two or three times stated flow rate) at full flow.

      To truly know would probably require testing the pumps under actual conditions. So … what were the pressures? I don’t think we actually know, and they would vary with position. Input pressure would be higher at the lower pumps, I’d expect, and lower at the higher ones. So flow would vary depending on pump position.

      Rossi appears to have entirely stopped bad-mouthing Cherokee, IH, and skeptics. He has just announced that the settlement agreement has been signed, so I expect to see a joint press release soon. Planet Rossi, on the other hand, seems about as vicious as ever. Well, maybe it’s toning down.

    2. I just reviewed the manual for this and on page 111 of 120 it shows capacity settings for this type of pump in the two diagrams in the bottom right hand corner. They almost exactly agree with what you have said and my calculations are the same.

      1. Rossi has now claimed that the Prominent pump has a capacity of 75 l/h at the plant operating conditions.

        He does not address the arguments that this is a metering pump, and treats it like a workhorse pump. Metering pumps are designed for precision addition of chemicals, not for maximum flow. What is bizarre here is that Lewan seems to have no clue as to possible errors in Rossi’s explanations, and this is on many issues. I have no experience with the specific pump. However, what I can tell, with confidence, is that Rossi’s arguments are defective, laden with contempt, and entirely self-serving. He doesn’t produce actual evidence, only chatter. Nothing new there.

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