"Shocking": Design of 1 MW Plants 1.2 x 0.4 m

Just when you thought that Andrea Rossi could not provide too much more surprising information about his work on the E-Cat comes something new.

Joseph Fine
August 28th, 2012 at 8:17 PM
Andrea Rossi,
For the listed Hot-Cat (“Cattus calidi”) dimensions, with an outer diameter of 90 mm and length of 330 mm, I calculated a volume of 0.0021 cubic meters. With a 10 kW power output, that means power per unit volume is 4763.33 kW / cubic meter.
Of course, other equipment is also needed. But even allowing for a factor of at least 20 brings this down to 238 kW/ cu. meter. “Cattus calidi, indeedi.” (Hot cat, indeed.)

Joseph

Dear Dr Joseph Fine:

You are perfectly right: in fact we are designing the new 1 MW plants, for hot temperature, and the dimensions will be those of a cylinder with a diameter of 1.2 m and a lencth od 0.4 m.
Is shocking, I myself are surprised, but it is so.

Warmest Regards,
A.R.

Joseph fine is basing his calculation on the size of the reactor in the famous Cures photograph which Andrea Rossi provided, which is not much larger in length than a standard ruler, with a diameter smaller than a 1 liter soft drink bottle. I suppose that by arranging these units in a compact manner it is not inconceivable to reach the dimensions that Rossi mentions here. There will of course need to be plumbing involved if the plant is producing steam, but with the tube design of these reactors you could perhaps simply thread piping through the hole of each reactor.

I must add that I’m no engineer (if you can’t already tell!) — so others may have better ideas about what might be involved here. Going from a large shipping container to something the size of a medium size barrel which produced perhaps 10 times the energy as the low temperature plant would be no mean feat. I guess the other question that is bound to come up is whether Rossi is lying about this. You must use your own judgment about that.

UPDATE: This comment from Rossi clarifies the design:

Dear Franco:
Attention: the dimensions 1.2 x 0.4 is not the surface of the surface of the reactors! Inside this drum of 1.2 x 0.4 m there are 100 reactors , each of one having about 1 200 cm^2 of surface !
I talked of the dimensions of the external container, not of the heat exchange surface !