ECCO - Steam rate / quality videos
Over the past few weeks, Suhas Ralkar has taken some time to perform some visual tests of his reactors output for us. The first image that came back is given below ( zoom in and annotations by Bob Greenyer ), it looked encouraging.
This work was requested in light of the last video we took of steam coming out of me356's AURA device when we knew that 550W was being applied to the device, verified by our calorimetry. That visual serves as a good reference point and, having experiencing this and the output from the ECCO device up close and personal, Bob Greenyer had this opinion -
When I saw the output from the AURA device at 550W, I was struck by its wetness and leisurely pace. When mentally comparing it to the output I had originally seen from ECCO, they seemed an order of magnitude apart. The ECCO output was apparently coming out of a long uninsulated pipe, through a 3/8th inch ball valve with such velocity, that I recalled the steam volume bouncing off the bottom of the bucket and travelling vertically up, was travelling faster than the AURA steam went sideways!
The video Bob is referring to is this UHD one
He took another close up video at the same resolution where the steam, at least to the eye, was invisible, the water vapour being thrust up from the bottom of the bucket makes this harder to discern on video.
Suhas does admit that he had not done any steam quality tests.
Lastly a 240 frames per second (fps) video was recorded at 480p on a GoPro, this has been downsampled to 60fps since this is the limit of youtube.
Comparing like for like?
Given that the ECCO steam was coming out of a long not insulated metal pipe, it was not a fair comparison with the AURA video, also, the ID of the ECCO pipe was at 3/8ths inch, representing an area over 2.5 times larger than the exit from the AURA pipe. To make things balanced, Suhas shortened and insulated the feed pipe and he added a pipe reducer, to make the output inner diameter 6mm. The image at the top of the article came from this test, as did this video below (best viewed alone on Youtube due to aspect).
From this test you can see that the input water was 32.4ºC and that the output periodically looked transparent, so perhaps not 100% dry, could this perhaps be partly due to condensation in the remaining bare pipe section? What one might say, is that there does not appear to be any drops of water coming out, as Bob Greenyer recorded earlier in the year, from the then, uninsulated long metal pipe and 3/8ths inch valve, when the temperature was reported to be 101ºC.
Despite the analysis of the first photo we received, we were concerned about the possible torchlight shadowing, of the outlet, by the larger pipes above. So Suhas and his team recorded another video for us (best viewed alone on Youtube due to aspect).
The input water temperature was lower, at 32ºC here and the output 'steam' higher at 108ºC. There is a pressure gauge in the video also reading around 200 g/cm3 which is about 0.2bar, this may be gauge pressure suggesting that the steam was at 1.2bar absolute. At this pressure, water boils at 104.81ºC so, if the steam really is at 108ºC, this could mean good things. Suhas states that the temperature and pressure sensing is taken at the same point after the steam leaves the reactor and so the evidence is pointing towards the device producing super heated steam.
We do not know the input water flow rate (however, we did send Suhas a Sensus thermal watt flow meter a few weeks back and he should have it soon), if only we did!
We also do not know what the input power is, based on the details supplied to us, 8 cores, 100W per core discharge and 15-35W per core ultrasonics, we are looking at 920 - 1080W.
Conclusion
Having had the same set of eyes observe both the known 550W steam production from AURA through a 6mm aperture and the up to 1080W claimed input power derived steam from ECCO through a 9.525 mm aperture, one might be forgiven for thinking that the output is way beyond a mere doubling of the input power.
With the new evidence presented by Suhas in these recent photos and videos, there is a chance that the ECCO device is producing high quality, superheated steam. We need to be able to concurrently see what the input power and input water flow rate is to determine if the device is producing a positive output. We look forward to having that opportunity and are tooled up and ready.
What do you think?
Tell us what you make of the visuals presented - what advice can you give us?
UPDATE: From call 6th July 2017
Suhas states that the temperature and pressure sensing is taken at the same point after the steam leaves the reactor and so the evidence is pointing towards the device producing super heated steam.
Tanks for sharing and awesome work
We do what we can. Thanks for your attention.
What is the total input and output power of the reactor in this video?
The claim is between 920 and 1080W, this is not verified by us yet and is the biggest sticking point, a little higher up the pecking order than not knowing the input flow rate.
Very good, the new fire is coming.
There always seam to be a dozen ways and more that thwart its arrival, but this seams closer.
your post is great I don't need to give you any advice cause your work is perfectly explained thanks a lot for sharing it and keep on posting :)
Thanks for the comment.
Doesn't the IR absorption characteristic change with steam saturation, and couldn't a really cheap detector be cobbled together to measure that?
Well - we have the Optris! However, the cables are stuck in Prague in customs.
Any thoughts as to why the input temperature is 32 degrees? Aura water input temperature was around 16 degrees (I think).
Very impressed with that steam output pressure - I think during testing you'll get bubbles when you sparge steam into the bucket.
Hi Swanie,
It is in Mumbai in the summer and the water storage is on the top of the industrial unit. The sun will heat that water up, even at night it is not particularly cool. Today for instance the Day / Night temperature is 29ºC and 27ºC.
The AURA water was from a ground based pipe and the temperature at night was around 10ºC.
The steam here is a real risk and quite a challenge to work with. We still hope we can run a faster water rate through it and keep the output temperature under 60ºC. What this does show is that the ECCO device can at least produce process level steam regardless of the input power not bringing verified yet.