Prime Ideas

This weekend I’ve spent all my time rebuilding things.  My circuits now find a home inside a plastic case from Radio Shack to get rid of the wires.  I’ve soldered in the new MOSFET and CAPS so that all my circuits appear to be working correctly.  I’ve mounted the boards inside my box and added a 12v fan to keep things nice and cool.

 Next I build a new 4 cell system out of Plexy so that I can better video the test results for everyone to see.  The new setup is much better for seeing the bubbles between the cells as well as down below the water level.

With the new tuning circuit in place, the hydrogen output is very very low.  I think that now that I have the circuit working properly I now have to actually tune it in order to find the frequency for things to work well.  This is going to require quite a bit of work I would imagine and am still thinking through the process to determine the best way to go about it.

I have hooked the system to a buzzer in order to hear the frequency changes but didn’t get what I was looking for. You can see this in the videos that I’ve uploaded.  I’ll post questions on the forum so for more info see there.

The new tank looks like its going to do great for future video work as you can see a lot better now.

Anyway, no new test results only new setup and the video will walk you through all of that.

Here is a picture of the new box

Test-019 - This test walks you through the new circuit boards and setup.  Also lets you hear the circuits performing over a buzzer.

Test-020 - This test shows the new cell running straight DC without the timing circuit.  Notice the way the bubbles seem to start from where the cathode runs through the plates and not from the very bottom.

At the request of someone I ran a test tonight to see what the resistance of the cell was before and after charges.  I also wanted to see if the cell held a charge when I unplugged the current.  Here are my measurements.

 Before the test began I could not get any resistance readings at all.  Had to wait until after cell had been producing hydrogen before it would read.

After 30 minutes of running I unplugged the terminals and took a resistance reading of 14.2M ohms and dropping 0.01M ohms/ second.  After about 5 minutes it had dropped to 12.22M ohms and the rate had slowed to 0.01M ohms/6 seconds.

 I then plugged the cell back in and let run for 5 minutes.

When running this time measured battery and amperage and got 13.3V and 1.76A which comes to around 7.56ohms.  Not really sure why the hot and cold numbers work out so differently but I’m confident some of my friends can explain it and I’ll post an update here later.

Next I unplugged the cell and took new readings.  Resistance back up to 14.3M ohms and dropping as before.  Measured current and got reading of 1.045V across anode and cathode with no battery plugged in at all.  In fact, both terminals were removed so the cell was sitting free. 

 I have decided to build a see-through container with seperate cell compartments in it in order to aid in my testing.  I’ve also sperated my 11 plate cell into 2, 5 plate cells and flatted the plates out with 1 set to see what the difference between the curved and flat plates are.  Probably take me most of the weekend to setup for the new tests so I’ll let everyone know when we’re ready for some new videos…

Well, after a lot of thinking and looking I think I’ve come up with a little better design for my plates.  I’ve chosen to stay with the plate design for now because it is much easier to change things up.  Once the tube design is built its a little more difficult to add more tubs or change things around for different tests such as plate seperation and so on.

 Like the previous design we still have the 11 plates that make up the unit.  The approximate spacing between plates is from 1-2mm.  The new design has the two top and bottom holes drilled straight through at 1/2″.  Then I have added two more alternating sets of holes on the left and right side of the plates.  These holes alternate between a threaded 5/16″ rod and a 1/2″ hole allowing for one plate to conduct and the other not.  The holes alternate from side to side to allow for cathode - anode - cathode -anode….. - cathode layout.  This design has the two outside plates being cathodes and therefore not conducting on the outside surfaces.

I’ve placed hard plastic supports on the 4 outside holes in order to support the assembly better, and have rubber spacers between each plate.  The assembly is put together before the threaded rods are inserted into place to allow each plate to stay more evenly spaced.

The device currently averages out to around 2.07amps with 12.9V for around 27watts.  During operation my MOSFET is getting extremely hot and I can already see that I’m going to have to put a heat sink next to it.  I’m a little worried about the 1/4watt resistors I have on the board and am waiting from input from a few of you on this to see if I need bigger ones.  So far the board is still working and I haven’t fried anything but there are a few things getting warm because I can smell them.

The video below shows all of this in more detail and also shows the device working.  I’m still only using 1/2 of the circuit and plan to start building the rest of the circuit later today.  Hopefully by tonight we can see what difference the entire circuit makes on the overall production.  There are still a few more things to consider on the circuit but we should be getting closer to something that will work.

Last note before video:  I noticed that on this design I immediately get massive bubble formation on all plates before anything starts to happen.  This is the first time I’ve seen anything like this and it may be what some people were talking about requiring the plates to be conditioned before they perform correctly.  I can definately see a problem with this now.  However, I didn’t see any drop in current and we actually got an increase compared to tests the other day.  So I’m not sure what to attribute to it at the moment.

Overall changes:  Plate spacing more consistent at between 1 and 2mm.  Larger 5/16 threaded rod for electrodes between plates compared to earlier 1/4″.  Plate spacing held firm by other non conduncting stainless steel 1/4″ threaded rod.  We are pulling over 1/2amp more juice and I really don’t yet know why.  I wouldn’t think the 5/16″ rod over the 1/4″ would make this much difference by itself…

Here is the video.  Please comment and advise if you see anything I need to address…

Test-18: This test shows new design assembly using 2 assembly (non conducting) bolts to hold plates together, then tapping 5/16Rod for anode and cathode electrodes. Also shows assembly in action.

Well, I retract my statements about not having the white buildup on the plates.  After taking the assembly apart in order to rebuild it with things closer together, I noticed that all of the negative plates do in fact have a white coating on them.  I do not however retract the statement that I see no noticable effect of having the film or not having it.  Amperage is no better or worse and production of gas has not changed as a result of its formation.

Now, onto the good stuff.  I’ve added 4 more plates to the design and closed the gap to about 3mm.  There are 11 plates together and the amperages went up 2 times what it was on the previous test.  So adding 4 plates doubled amperage.  But the question is:  Did it change the results?  Well, not by much.  After reviewing the video from last night which I put together a comparison for you below, I determined that tonights test was better.  However, I changed both the gaps and the number of plates.  I guess I should not have made the change to both at the same time and tomorrow I think I’ll remove the 4 plates so that I have the same surface area and see what it does for the production.

At this point my opinion is that the plates being closer together actually prevents some of the production and I expect to see less production even without the 4 plates in the mix.  One note however is that assemblying the plates is more of a problem than you would imagine.  Trying to get the threads consistent and even and therefore have a perfectly spaced assembly is quite tricky.  At least with me working alone, and as you will see from the video, the first attempt failed.

I’m trying to come up with a little different design that will help me to keep things more defined and structured but at this point its just not happening.

One test I did tonight that was very confusing is that I sealed the container and left the device running for over an hour.  The amperages went up a bit to around 1.6amps and the device got warm to the touch but not hot.  The device has a tub coming out the top and into a bucket of water.  The hopes were that at some point I’d start to see bubbles coming from the tube.  You can see from the video that something is happening but not sure what.  Well, after over an hour, nothing.  Not the first bubble, no pressure at all.  I know the device seals as I’ve done this test with KOH numerous times and it bubbles out pretty rapidly, albeit at 30amps.  I didn’t expect the results to be close to the other, but I honestly did expect something after that period of time.

Here is the video clip of assembling the latest unit.

The first test with 3mm gap and 11 plates

Compare last night to tonight

I’ve been talking to a few of you about this plate conditioning and I’ve come to the conclusion that it just doesn’t make sense.  The white residue on the plates that a few people talk about just has not formed on my plates despite all my efforts.  I’ve even let the device cook for over 8 hours using the DC timing circuit, again with no results. 

 Then after talking it through we got to thinking that it really doesn’t make sense.  The idea is that the bubbles cause the device to not produce as much hydrogen due to less surface area on the plates in direct contact with the water.  At first thought this would seem a likely scenario, but with later observations it just doesn’t seem to hold up.  All of my tests to date have flowed directly between the amount of amperage introduced into the water and the amount of hydrogen you get out. 

Using this observation one would have to conclude that less amperage = less hydrogen and that if it was observed that after a period of 5, 10, 100 minutes, the amperages started to decrease due to some unknown reason, and that it was observed on the plates small water bubbles then ok.  We could continue down the road to make the statment that we need to determine a way to get rid of the bubbles.  Or even that “hey, I noticed that with the white stuff on the plates, I get more amps and therefore more hydrogen.

However, I have never seen this happen.  Instead as the test goes on I get more and more current flow.  I’ve never seen the current go down or get less.  Therefore I have to reason that the current is still flowing, with or without the bubbles.  And also, despite the fact that there are bubbles on the plates, I’ve never seen the plates totally covered with them and they seem to pop on and off the plates.  Some sit for some time, some come and go.

I’m going to need to experiment a bit more on this fact as I may be wrong, but so far I have not observed anything to lead me to think these bubbles are hurting me and therefore it should not be necessary to condition the plates before operating the device.  This is a clever way to tell me my plates aren’t working like yours because I don’t have the white stuff but so far its just not chewing right.

I’ll keep experimenting and see if I can make sense of it or if I can disprove the theory…