Alumina Emissivity and the Lugano E-Cat Test (Bob Higgins)

The following post was submitted by Bob Higgins, member of the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project team.

I updated my paper analysis of alumina emissivity – applicable to the Lugano report.  I recently had a technical reviewer that found an issue and have recalculated the graphs to correct the problem.  I am enclosing the updated paper (comments happily received).

The revised experiment is making more sense of the HotCat measurements – the new data reduces the inconsistencies in the Lugano experiment.  The paper shows the temperature was 1100C, not 1410C.  The COP was approximately 2.36, not 3.75.  This temperature is compatible with an inconel heater wire.  The results are also commensurate with Parkhomov.

One of the things that didn’t add up was the heater wire.  You see resistance wire coming out of the reactor (glowing red in operation) and are told that it is inconel (OK, inconel is a resistor wire).  If the heater coil were made of something else, capable of very high temperature, why would Rossi have put resistor wire for the leads?  He wouldn’t.  You could use low resistivity Ni wires and not have any heat in the lead wires.  The only conclusion is that the lead wires are the same as the coil; presumably inconel.  Inconel heater wires will not withstand 1410C for any length of time – failing on the order of minutes.  Also the wire temperature is higher than the surface temperature, probably near 1500C.  The same is true for pretty much any ductile metal wire you want to use for the heater – by 1410C wire temperature, you have almost no life.  That’s why MFMP looked into other heating core technologies, to try to get to 1410C.  Only after my analysis, it never has to get that hot.  It appears that the maximum sustained Lugano HotCat operating high regime temperature was close to 1100C; well within the medium term temperature range of an inconel wire heater.

The paper is also available on Google drive at: