Prime Ideas

I’m starting to find that I’m going to have to possibly retract a few of my earlier statements concerning the water and the conditioning of the plates.  Without changing anything except for putting tap water instead of well water and cleaning out my test cell so that I could video tape a clearer image, it appears the cell is starting to perform better and better.

Here is a short video of clear tap water. 12.6V battery with no charging system hooked up and no timing circuit.  A little over 4A of juice and what does it remind you of?  In fact, I’m starting to now question the actual output of Myer’s and Dave Lawton’s cells.  I have not started capping and measuring mine yet but dang if the video doesn’t look pretty close to what they showed.

Test 030: Video of new cell G02 in fresh tap water hooked to straight DC without Pulsing circuit.

And of course we have to finish off this post with a few less impressive posts.  Again, you will see a big difference from the above posted video and these which were run hours earlier.  The cell seems to be getting more productive as time goes on.  I did however notice a problem.  The longer the cell operates the hotter it gets.  Nothing too bad, but it does get warmer.  And the warmer it gets the more conductive the water and the more Amps run through it.  And as this goes on you end up with a runaway current. Something I’ve seen many times with KOH but it appears its going to be an issue here as well.

Test 029: This video shows the nasty foam on top of the water. 

I did notice after cleaning my cell up that the stainless wire I’m using to connect my cell electrically are rusting a little bit.  So I’m going to have to replace them and I’m not sure if its actually the reason for all the foam or not.  Not thinking so but we’ll have to wait and see.

Test 029.5: This video shows what things look like after the cell has stopped running.  The foam goes away on its own and the water is an orange color.  Entire cell coated with a slimmy substance.

After letting the cell run for another hour in the tap water, I video taped what the top of the water looks like again.  You’ll notice that the water is clearer than before and we only have slight foam formations in the very corners of the cell.  Also notice that the bubble formations on top of the water are more better and much larger than anything we’ve seen before so it does appear the cell is improving with time.

Test 031: Cell G2 after running for 1 hour in clean tap water.  Would you drink it?

Test 032: Cell G2 after running for 2 hours in tap water.  Cleaning out after this test and starting over again to see if we get less foam on 3rd 2 hour run.

–glenn hancock

Well, I’ll let you guys decide, but tonight I did a few extra things.  One thing I did was I hooked up the battery charger to see what effect it would have on the tests.  The battery is pretty full on its own, but as mentioned earlier the charger itself introduces some AC type current into the cell and I wanted to see if it effected anything, since all my earlier tests with the plates were done with the charger running.  Tomorrow I plan to actually hook it to my truck to see what effect the alternator has on the system, as I suspect its going to be a little more notable.

Tonight the main object of the test was to see how the cell performed when positioned as I designed it, and positioned upside down where the plexy plate is at the bottom of the cell instead of the top.  I’ve video taped everything and actually have a short clip of side by side comparisons between the two tests.  I honestly think the cell performs a good bit better with the plexy at the bottom of the tank, and may start performing all my tests with it in this position.  But I’ll wait to hear from some of you and your opinions.

Another thing I did in the first video clip is I filmed the cell running from the bottom.  This new cell container I built is proving to be very valuable, allowing me to film at angles not available before.  The main goal was set in motion when I noticed that another experimenter (Ron) had put plugs in his center anodes.  When asked why, he supplied me pictures of the before and after, and its actually quite impressive.  He told me that the thing that made him do this to begin with, was he saw the bubbles flowing down inside the tube.  As you’ll see from this clip, there is no flow inside my center anode tubes, but as soon as I figure out a clean way to plug my cell I’m going to test that as well.

Test-027: This test shows the cell upright and upside down as well as shots from the bottom of the cell looking up through it as it runs.

Test-028: This is a side by side comparison between right side up and upside down to help see the difference.

One note that I’m still trying to figure out from Ron, is that I think he’s running his tests with tap water which has a lot of extra chemicals in it and would increase his current flow compared to my well water.  As soon as I hear back on that I’ll let everyone know, but it would be like me adding a little KOH to my cell which would increase flow, but also temperature and everything that goes with it.  It would at least explain why his smaller cell is out performing my larger one which in concept should not be possible if we were both doing the same things.  And there has to be something turning his water so nasty so quickly.

See the forum under Finished Projects for updated pictures of Ron’s tests.

Well, tonight was the night.  I finally got the pipes fully assembled, spaced and wired.  I’ve attached some shots of the completed assembly as well as a few video clips to show how it performed.  Its nothing close to what Dave had shown in his very short video clip so we still have a ways to go, but I think this is the best test so far with using only water with no electrolytes added.

We were pulling 2.89A with a 12.4V battery which amounts to around 36W.  Straight DC with no pulsing circuit.  I didn’t video the pulsing circuit because at this point its a major joke.  When I plug that thing in with things set on their highest settings my amps go down to .4A and everything pretty much halts.  I will say one thing that I noticed however related to the pulsing circuit. When I had it plugged in, there were spots where it would shoot out large bubbles very quickly and then would sit a few seconds and would then shoot out more bubbles.  However, its impossible for anyone to tell me that they sat here and just played with settings until it performed like Dave showed in his video clip.  There are so many different combinations that you could spend a lifetime trying to find the right combination.

I’m therefore looking for some of the other pieces that I can add to the circuit to see how they effect it.  The pulsing circuit by itself is just not doing what people are claiming. And the mere fact that absolutely none of them tell you what they did to tune it proves to me that they have never done it and are only talking.

Anyway, here are a few shots of the final cell:

Here are a few video clips:

Test 024: This clip shows the cell fully assembled before entering the water.

Test 025: This clip shows the cell in the water for the very first time.

Test 026: This clip shows the cell running one more time for the night after being cycled a few times

As crazy as it sounds, I’ve been having trouble finding stainless steel pipe around where I live.  The few places I contacted about getting it said they’d have to special order it and I’d have to purchase in 20′ lengths.  1 Stick is over $200 and for testing, I didn’t want to have to do this.

So, we set off for Lowes to see what we could find.  What I found were 1-1/2″ and 1-1/4″ Stainless Steel hand rails for handicap persons for the shower.  I purchased 1 of each that were 36″ long and proceeded to hack them up.  I cut them up in 5″ sections but aftwards wished I had cut the center pieces a half inch longer just to aid with assembly.  You’ll see what I’m talking about when I’m completely through putting it together.

So here is a shot of the outside tubes mounted in their sleeve.  I did this a little different from anything I’ve seen. I put the mounting plate at the top instead of bottom of the cell.  I did this to see if I can force the small bubbles that float around in the water to stay up on top of the cell instead of floating around and back into the cell itself.  I don’t know if this is going to work as I did not make it take up the entire top of the cell but rather just serve as a buffer of sorts.

Then the center tubes were cut and small holes approximately the same size of some stainless steel picture hanging wire (also purchased from home depot), was drilled into the ends in order to connect my anodes together.

So the idea is to connect the outside tubes via my small screws and then connect the inside tubes slightly extended beyond the ends of the cathode tubes using the holes.  We’ll see upon final assembly if this was a good idea or not.  I hope to finish it up this week and maybe start running some tests on it.

Here is a video clip of the tubes in their current state.

Oh, and one major note for those that are married!!!  Don’t let your wife know you bought brand new stainless handrails just so you could cut them up…   It doesn’t go over well…

On a side note:  I wanted to post a few results I’ve calculated between plates and pipes…

 I wanted to take a few minutes to determine the usefulness of tubes versus plates. One of the finished projects I posted was from a fellow named Ron and he see’s much more activity than I do and the only real difference is that he uses tubes and I’m using plates.So in an attempt to explain this here is what I did.

Check my math!!!

1) The outside tube is 1″ and calculating for a 1/16″ wall thickness, the surface area of the inside 1″ tube should be:
2 * pi * .4687 * 6″ height = 17.64″ of surface area
2 * pi * .375 * 6″ height = 14.14″ of surface area

calculating anode * 6 pipes = 84.82″ total surface area
calculating cathode * 6 pipes = 105.84″

My plates surface area minus the holes that I’ve drilled and the square light switch hole are 12.48″ per plate. So using this you see that it takes a minimum of 9 plates to get the same surface area as the tubes.

Ron is using a straight 12v with no timing circuit and you can see his results here:
http://www.primeideas.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35

Ron also did not build his cell the same as Dave in that he used smaller diameter pipe which means that it would take even less plates to match Ron’s design, yet he still produces a lot more gas than I am with the plate design.

I have used up to 11 plates in my design and never got it where it was outputting enough gas to create bubbles within a 30 minute time frame. So given this information it appears the tube design performs better than flat plates given no other information.
A few more pictures…

I’ve learned how to use my Oscilloscope finally (at least I think I have) and in the process learned some pretty interesting things I wanted to share.

1) Looking at my first 555 circuit that is responsible for turning the main 555 circuit on and off, I noticed that instead of speeding up and slowing down, it actually changes the length that the circuit is turned on.  This would mean to me that instead of actually changing a frequency with this circuit, we are keeping the cycle of off consistent and stretching out the time the circuit is engaged.

2) While using my battery charger I discovered that whenever the charger turns on, it substantially influences the frequency that the circuit is sending to the cell.  This means that to have a consistent result, we are going to have to power the cell with a consistent power source.

3) Because the two 555 circuits are not exactly changing the frequencies at which they run, but rather are simply changing the time at which they stay active, they tend to cancel each other out in spots and the scope won’t trigger to lock in signals.  But I found that if you listen to the cell with your ear, when the cell gets at its highest pitch, the scope triggers and locks in on the current.  So there is a physical pitch to the cell at the point where it appears to resonate, and depending on where each timing circuit is positioned, it will affect that setting.  Also, there is more than one spot along each setting that seems to resonate but they are very difficult to tune in by hand.  It makes it a lot easier though, now that I’ve discovered the pitch, because it helps you hear approximately where and then you can look at the scope to fine tune.

4) Because the circuits are not really providing a constant frequency (at least not in my mind) to the cell, it would appear that perhaps they need to be adjusted a bit.  I am going to consult some of my new friends on this subject though because its possible I’m thinking about this all wrong…