(This update comes a little bit late, I apologize for that).

Defkalion’s reactor demo in Milan in July has been discussed extensively. A series of concerns have been raised, among them for the flow measurement not being accurate and for the flow of steam output into the sink being weaker than what could be expected.

Regarding the steam flow I already said that I regret not having opened the valve leading straight down towards the floor (the one we used when calibrating the water flow) to get a visual observation of the steam flow. I have later understood that others have asked to do the same thing but that Defkalion declined, arguing that opening that valve would disturb the equilibrium in the system.

After the demo I sent a couple of follow up questions to Defkalion’s chief scientist, John Hadjichristos, and I would like to share his answers here.

Mats: A Faraday cage only shields from electric fields, not magnetic fields. Can you discuss further how the strong magnetic fields you mentioned, reaching 1.6 Tesla, were shielded?

Hadjichristos: First of all we wish to clarify that the reported magnetic anomalies values relate to peak measurements. Shielding of such “noise” is done using mu metal materials and solenoids during tests having the declared objectives as in the protocol submitted to ICCF18. I apologize for the technically not correct use of the terms “cage” or “Faraday cage” as used in our internal lab jargon.

From a reader: At the time from 21:10 till 21:33 the output temp raised from 143°C to 166°C. But inner reactor temp was all the time constant at 355°C-358°C and coolant flow was 0,57 – 0.59 liter/min also constant. Is there any explanation for this phenomenon?

Hadjichristos: When coolant is in dry steam condition, flow is not constant. A pressure barrier within the coil surrounding the reactor creates flow flactuations that result to such ‘strange’ thermal behavior of coolant during the aforsaid period, srongly related also with stored energy in reactor’s metals. This can be easily explained noting also:

As I explained live during the demo, the flow measurement algorithm in our Labview software uses the slope (first derivative) of the plot of the reported fn pulses from the flow meter and not the n/(1/f1+1/f2+…+1/fn) or the more common in use (f1+f2+…+fn)/n methods, as the later are very sensitive leeding to huge systematic errors and wrong calorimetry results due to such fluctuations when occurred. The consequence “cost” of the method we use is the delay on the reported values on screen, which obviously does not influence the total energy output calculations with any “noise” as all fn values are used, whilst all thermometry measurements are “quicker” reporting “on screen”. All such 3 flow calculation methods from the flow meter’s signals give indentical instant flow measurement results only when f1=f2=…=fn aka when no steam pressure blocks water to flow from the grid smoothly.

Thanks to your reader bringing up this, not very much commented/analyzed in blogs, issue on flow wrong algorithms in use in similar calorimetry configurations.

Mats: Could you tell me which other external persons/validators were supposed to come and why they didn’t come?

Hadjichristos: No.

Mats: The sink where the steam was output, was it a normal sink with an open hole in the bottom leading to the ordinary drainage network, or was there any active venting, e.g. a fan, drawing gas down the sink? Could you also tell me the inner diameter of the steam outlet tube?

Hadjichristos: There was not any active venting to or in the drainage. The output pipe driving the steam to the drainage network was a 1/2″ diameter cooper pipe (not thermal insulated after the Tout thermocouple) whilst the PVC drainage pipe diameter was 2″. Cold water was flowing into the drainage hole from a water supply to protect the PVC drainage pipe from melting.

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Finally I would like to share some photos from the demo (click on the images for larger view).