electrolysys with horizontal plates

[Walter Hofmann]

Hi Walter-

Thanks for posting the video. Hey, maybe you discovered a way of cleaning up filthy water 
It's interesting that the water should react different in the different setups - that deserves further investigation for sure.

Regarding gas production differences, spacing between electrodes is of course very important and I couldn't tell if your spacing of the plates was the same or not between the two setups?

Keep in mind that using any more than 2 volts doesn't provide any gain in gas production. For electrolysis you need a little less than 1.5 volts to start the process and gas production will increase on up to about 2 volts. After 2 volts you don't gain any in gas production and in fact you will waste a lot of energy and produce heat etc. So in your setup of say 12 volts and 12 amps you have a 144 watt unit (watt = amps x volts). You could have a 2 volt unit @ the same 12 amps and have a 24 watt unit producing the same amount of gas. Using the same amount of power you are now using (about 144 watts) you could run 6 - 2volt units and produce 6 times the amount of fuel than you are now, with the same 144 watts.

1/2 litre of gas/min isn't enough to run your small ICE likely but it would be a nice supplemental fuel to try out for sure and see how the engine reacts to it. You can calculate the fuel required if you know the cc of the engine.

Great fun though this experiment of yours. Its very important to show the value of different electrode design configurations and its effects on electrolysis. Keep us posted!

Best Regards,

Yes it is verry inetresting
i will setup a big cell ( an old jacuzy poolfilter housing) and try it with my pool water maybe I can safe all the chlorine and get clear water.
In order to realy can compare I use the same material for all components including the spacer.
I know that I need less voltage but with the intend to compare different setups it is easier with straight 12 V because to put different setups in series it does not work due to the different resistence and reaction. I could see after the cells was disconnected that they stillhold some voltage and generate bubbles way less but they do this till the voltage is below 1.3V.
Yes I know that 1/2liter would probably not be enough but I needed to start somewhere now is not probleme to add 1 or 2 more cells maybe even more.
I dont know if there is a roole of thumb for how much hydrogen per hp is needed to run a ICE not as a race horse because generators running somewhere in the midrange.
But overall I will find out over the weekend what and how it works. I will keep you guys posted.
greetings
walt

[Walter Hofmann]

Hi all
does anybody know if somebody from the guys who test this cells did the conductivity measure?
Because all depends on the conductivity of the water I do t all the time in order to have comparable data I use a electronic TDS stick which automaticly checks the temperature and correct the TDS ( total dissolved solids) and then use a converter calculator to convert the ppm TDS in to micro siemens pro cm.
I did find out that with everythings the same the real generating process startes only at around 2,000 ppm TDS what is about 2.70mS/cm and the goes upt progressivly upt to 2,700 ppm (4.22 mS/cm).
If somebody has such data please let me know.
greetings
walt

[hartiberlin]

Hi Walter-

Thanks for posting the video. Hey, maybe you discovered a way of cleaning up filthy water 
It's interesting that the water should react different in the different setups - that deserves further investigation for sure.

Regarding gas production differences, spacing between electrodes is of course very important and I couldn't tell if your spacing of the plates was the same or not between the two setups?

Keep in mind that using any more than 2 volts doesn't provide any gain in gas production. For electrolysis you need a little less than 1.5 volts to start the process and gas production will increase on up to about 2 volts. After 2 volts you don't gain any in gas production and in fact you will waste a lot of energy and produce heat etc. So in your setup of say 12 volts and 12 amps you have a 144 watt unit (watt = amps x volts). You could have a 2 volt unit @ the same 12 amps and have a 24 watt unit producing the same amount of gas. Using the same amount of power you are now using (about 144 watts) you could run 6 - 2volt units and produce 6 times the amount of fuel than you are now, with the same 144 watts.

1/2 litre of gas/min isn't enough to run your small ICE likely but it would be a nice supplemental fuel to try out for sure and see how the engine reacts to it. You can calculate the fuel required if you know the cc of the engine.

Great fun though this experiment of yours. Its very important to show the value of different electrode design configurations and its effects on electrolysis. Keep us posted!

Best Regards,

I have tried also different electrolyzer setups
and switching between 6 Volts and 12 Volts DC supply
voltage gives indeed much more gas at 12 Volts,
so there is not just the additional heating, but also more
gas at 12 Volts...

[pg46]

Hi hartiberlin-

Yes with the identical cell setup but first using 6 volts and then going with 12 volts you will produce more gas certainly but then its drawing more amps and the cell will get hotter faster too. I was talking about efficiency as (eventually) you will want the max gas produced per amp used. Besides you'll want to avoid "amperage run away" and all of its associated problems - trust me, as I've been there and its not pretty. For an extreme example and for fun, imagine if you will hitting the same little cell with say 200 Volts- heck why not? - I've actually done it too. Boy do you produce gas! but then things are foaming, getting real hot real quick and you are now boiling out your water too producing heaps of steam and foam etc. Well, the thing quickly gets out of hand and you are soon diving for the off switch. Kinda fun though...but a little nasty. Oh...and I have exploded entire cells unintentionally too which again was kinda fun but then kinda nasty too  My neighbors however were not amused.

Walter -

I have a honda single cylinder 100cc 4 stroke engine. The cylinder will contain 100cc(or 0.1 lt) of gaseous mixture. It will fire every 2nd revolution as its a 4 stroke engine. If I want it to run at say 1000 rpm then I need to fire that gaseous mixture 500 times/min to achieve it. 500 X 0.1 = 50 lts of fuel mix.  So I reckon I need 50 lts of combustable fuel/air mix stuff per min to run this honda at 1000 rpm (without a load) I think mine is around a 10 HP motor but not sure.
Maybe some of these figure(if correct) will help you figure out what you'll need for volumes for your engine project.

Also if you calculate what your engine consumes in gasoline then you'll be able to calculate what you'll require in equivelent hydrogen gas energy.


Best Regards,

[Walter Hofmann]

Hi pg46,
thanks for the tip.
first in regards to 12V verses 2 V I try this version and with the same setup on plates and water it showed that the 12V version brought about 5 times more gas output and the temperature was after one hour rissen to 85 degree F what is actually a normal operating temperature and I mean 5 times more output is something to think about. I personally dont care about amperage efficiency because i use a carbatterie which is charged from the generator during low time. The other point is that a temp of 85 degree makes it easier to generate the gas with other words is a winn winn situation. You are right it needs to be watch not to have a runn a way. this can be avoided with a tempreture sensor whicch shuts off the cell and switches back on. thats why I wana try a three cell parallel setup where the cell can be switched on and off on demand or like temperature.
For this reason it was exiting to see how the horizontal mesh unit performed from the start up creating the bubbles like a explosion and after first tests the temperature was much cooler then with any other version I would say about 20 to 30 degrees cooler.
Now I did a test on the fly with 2 inch diameter carbon disc 2 of them with a 1.5mm distance and I tell you the effect was a total disapointment first there was no bubbles coming from the surface only the edges brought some up and seams to be not a fraction of the mesh unit further the amperage draw was only 1A only after I increased the conductivity to over 4,000 ppm TDS it draw 2 A. I will test this a bit further I also will do a test with a SS sheat disc horizontal version to see how this performs.
Over the weekend I post a couple small vid about this tests.
greetings
walt