electrolysys with horizontal plates

[Walter Hofmann]

There is a video on my site http://cmnet.ca/projects/imgp0597.avi where I am igniting the gas as it is produced and you can see what happens when the flame back tracks to the bubbler... made me jump  You can see I had a small ball check valve to try to stop the back fire.

Hi comster,
nice vid, first what do use the ignition coil for? I believe you was realy lucky that you did not have a big electrolyzer cell on it, because the size hose where you did ignite whould probably have given a higher jump of the bubbler, like in my case I only had the hose of 1/8 diameter and on the end a 1/16 welding tip  and it blow my pressure gauge which was on the bubbler connected with a 3/8 plastic hose, about 10 feet away and distroit the gauge. The boom was so loud that my wife heart it in my house which is 70 feet away and came running to see if I am OK.
But  overall it is verry importand for security to have a flashback protection in the system. I just dont know why A flashback arrestor for azethylen would not work for the hydroxi which is similar to azethylen. If it would be pure hydrogen what comes out the cells there would be a major difference because then the flame would suck air what it needs from the outside right in to the systemand, kind of implode what is not the case with the hydroxi gas which is allready a combination hydrogen and oxygen and whould practical explode the contend.
But anyway I believe everybody who experiements with electrolyzer cells will experience a flashback.
greetings
walt

[joule]

Walter!

Lets all hope that when you get to 4000 LPH. enough to run that 3hp engine past idle that you never have another explosion.

[c0mster]

Walt
I used the ignition coil in the video to ignite the gas as it was created. The coil was driven by a resonant circuit tapped with a npn transistor to give a steady and rapid firing.   The hose coming out of the bubbler was ?? with 2 pecies of 3/8? tube inside that held the little ball as a check valve. I decided after that to build a stack, like you see in the oil patch, it was a small brass tube, 6? long, crimped on the top end to a pin hole, like a torch end, to test burning the gas. The thing I found most interesting was that even though the end was like a torch and I had a check valve at the bottom, the flash backs still happened and it was like the gas had the ability to run back on itself, what I mean is, it seem to create a vacuum when it ignited and would not push the check valve closed by back pressure but suck it open. If you watch the video frame by frame you can see when it backfires how the flame actually starts at the bottom of the tube.

Camster

[IcyBlue]

There is a video on my site http://cmnet.ca/projects/imgp0597.avi where I am igniting the gas as it is produced and you can see what happens when the flame back tracks to the bubbler... made me jump 

You are producing detonation gas with this setup. This is a very dangerous mixture since it rather instable and carries its own supply of oxygen. Once it is ignited, the flame will run through the whole pipe system until it either runs out of gas or it finds a larger reservoir of this mixture. In this case you get a dangerous explosion. We've done some serious research with this kind of gas and it rocked the whole lab, despite all safety precautions we had taken. This is nothing one should play with in the garage or the kitchen, since someone easily and seriously could get hurt. 

just my 2 ct.

[joule]

For my 1 cent of knowledge it seems to me that far to many people are doing H2+O2 (common duct) electrolysis in hope of the gold pot at the end of the rainbow, without any idea of what the danger is.

Using the wrong hose plastic or metal type is like a bomb. Mixing metals is far from wise, certain metals will act as a catalyst and ignite H2+O2. Improper hose plastics will cause leakage, (PTFE advised if you must use plastic).

One must fully understand that the spped of H2 is far faster than O2 thru a pipe, this leads to big problems.

Containers; NO glass, no plex, poly-carbonate maybe, stainless with relief valves are best.

Working with H2+O2 is (if you are getting real production) is far more dangerous than if you were running a meth lab.

This seat of the pants, get a lot of bubbles is one sure way to insure you are in trouble, maybe your wife or child. This is not a toy.

No having said that, we need people to work in this area, yet unless you obtain OU in the process you are playing mind games with yourself. Under ideal conditions (common cell) you can expect at best 94% eff., not feed it to a ICE and you get 35% eff., so what id the game here.

Train yourself, know the danger, learn how much gas (H2+O2) is required to equal a liter of gas and you will at once see where it appears to be one waste of time. Run your car on H2+O2, okay, can you produce 25-30 kLPH? If you can and still move the vehicle I want to talk to you in a serious way.

I am not running anyone down, I just want to stop the waste and danger, getting bubbles en.mass or a nice blue flame is far from the real thing. Sorry, but its the botton line.

Please don't Spam the List, I just dumped on some so take it and grin