AURA - Steam rate video

Right at the end of testing the AURA family reactor we evaluated, we took the opportunity to grab a high frame rate (120fps, 1280x720p) video of the steam production from the reactor for reference.

Figure 1: Grab from high frame rate video showing entrained water droplets

Timing

We can pinpoint the timing of our steam video firstly due to our handy, oversized, digital clock we had at hand.

Figure 2: Time just before taking steam video
Secondly, due to the time difference on the two GoPro recordings (even though they are wrong time/dates!)

Figure 3: Times of consecutive GoPro recordings
The last way points were; the fact that we switched off the data logging during the second segment of the video (you can hear Brian Albiston requesting to do so in the video) and me356 switched off the reactor just after the steam quality recording. This can be seen on a blown up section from a wonderful graph produced by an experiment follower, who calls himself 'Can'.

Figure 4: Animated Gif showing the time just before the steam hose was disconnected
The point of evaluation is just after a the energy from a high powered spike assessed by the PA1000 to be around 1000W was captured into the heat exchangers output and whilst the input power had trended down to around 550W. You will see that the first section of video, where Ryan Hunt is in shot, is recorded during the flat top maximum of the last period of power input as he is disconnecting the hose. Then the heat exchanger the shows the temperature differential falling off a cliff, due to the actual disconnection of the steam hose from the AURA reactor.

Note that earlier in the experiment, when the input power had been held steady at 1000W (see around 17:10), the temperature differential in the coolant water of the heat exchanger was notably higher (10.7 instead of 5.3ºC).

Here is the full chart, made by 'Can', for the third AURA family experiment.

Figure 5: Full time graph of key data from AURA experiment 3

Accuracy of the calorimetry

Can also produced a nice graph to show the cumulative coefficient of performance (COP) assessed during the experiment, seemingly showing we achieved accurate calorimetry with minor insulation losses, unrecovered reactor output energy in the waste water and some input energy that included the control system power of 5W and a little transient power for the pump. With these factors added in the 93% energy assessed was a pleasing reward for all the hard work put in by the team in the previous months to the live test.

Figure 6: Graph showing cumulative COP for AURA test 3, calorimetry

So what did the AURA steam output look like right at the end of our testing?

Video 1: Video of AURA steam output with accumulated power at least 550W

Conclusion

The steam quality at this point in the experiment was notably low, the output from the hose contained large quantities of water which sputtered out and probably would mean that the reactor was being cooled too fast. No one could use this kind of visual evidence to calculate performance of the reactor based on converting all the input water to steam. It is encouraging that despite this, our calorimetry system performed accurately. Of course, at this point the heat exchanger had been disconnected and you are seeing more the effect of the direct power applied with just a little time constant from the higher input power.

me356 has in the past shared a video of a previous reactor running at an unknown/unverified input power that appeared to show much drier steam ejecting at a higher rate. It is a shame that we could not test this reactor.

Our video above however, gives us a good idea of what this kind of verified power input (around 550W+) would look like coming out of a 6mm inner diameter pipe as wet, water entrained steam, it looks like a kettle that is starting to boil and it serves as an important reference point for future tests.

---

If you want to be automatically notified as soon as a new blogpost is made, please follow. Also, please up vote and re-steem the article as it will help get exposure for the New Fire. If you are here just browsing, you really should get a steemit account, as it is the fastest way to responsive, advertising free blogging and you can earn real money by helping to build the network - you can also earn money for just commenting on another contributors blog, the secret is, write quality content and comments and then others will up vote you.