Andrea Rossi has made some interesting comments lately in response to questions regarding the self-sustain activity in the Hot Cat. Here are the Q & As
1) Is it true? 218 consecutive hours in ssm?
2) If not true, how long are the ssm event durations?
3) Does the Hot-Cat still require one hour power, one hour ssm segments?1- 218 hours of ssm is true
2- the duration is regulated by the control system, are not regular, dependon many factors: can be 1 hour, 2 hours, or minutes
3- no, the Hot cat works differentlya. I therefore understand the total amount of time the Hot eCat spent in self-sustaining mode (SSM) was 218 hours?
b. The 218 hours consisted of a number of separate SSM periods, ranging in duration from minutes to hours?
c. During those SSM periods, no electricity was used to heat the Hot eCat, the electricity only supplied power to the control system?
d. During the SSM period, the surface temperature stayed within some range. Can you specifiy the temperature range while in SSM?a. yes
b. yes
c. yes
d. 1030/1070 °C
Just as a reminder, the total length of time of this test was 336 hours, so during this test the hot cat was running in self-sustain mode for 65 % of the time. From what Rossi says here, during that time the temperature never dropped below 1030 C.
We may be getting a bit blasé here, but 218 hours is 9 days! To have a device the size of a medium sized telescope that can put out over 1000 C of heat for that long with no energy input (except some contolling mechanism) is remarkable. Of course, that that was not a consecutive nine days; it is interesting that Leonardo has developed a way to regulate the self sustain mechanism, so that is cycles on and off as needed, and that the cycling is not regular. Somehow they have ways to detect the activities of these mysterious reactions and are able to respond to them automatically.
Self sustain appears to be the real achievement of this latest hot cat design. Without it, the hot cat would still be a remarkable technology, but with ssm it moves it to a new level. One would expect that refining and perfecting the ability to control this ssm would be a priority now for Leonardo, in order to lead to greater and greater efficiencies.
