Crystal Cell Research

[halfvulcan]

Ok, I'm just going to document my personal method. I'm using materials I have on-hand.  So my metals are copper and aluminum. I'm using a general recipe from one of IBPointless's videos about making low-current dry crystal cells, except obviously without the magnesium.
My materials are very thick uninsulated copper wire (not sure the guage) and aluminum foil, newspaper, water, epsom salt, and salt substitute.
1. I mix and stir well equal amounts of epsom and substitute into the water in a bowl
2. lay the newspaper strips in and let them soak for at least 5 minutes or so
3. wrap a thoroughly soaked strip around the straightened length of copper wire
4.  I roll that in my hands until it feels like its pressed in well around the wire, roughly round with no obvious protrusions, and feels well-bonded to the wire.
5. I leave it/them to dry and grow crystals for over 24 hours. Ibpointless recommends at least 48 hours for the much larger ones.
6. I feel them and usually they're completely stiff and seem dry, though on step 8 I've noticed some of them have water dripping out, so maybe I'm not allowing enough drying time.
7. I wrap around a piece of aluminum foil that'nearly completely covers the newspaper and wraps around twice.
8. I use a two-foot length of plastic-insulated wire  to tighten the foil down with pressure against the newspaper by tightly coiling it around the foil, then unwrap it. This creates a "ridged" look to the outside of the foil layer. This, imo, helps hold things together and keep it from loosening over time. My cells feel like solid objects as a result.
9. This is a new step I've started doing. I test each and if I don't see close to the .54 volts or better out of them, I heat them up in the toaster oven for a few minutes. That usually "wakes them up". Mind you, NOT the microwave. NEVER put metal in a microwave.

I've been creating these in about 8 inch lengths and they don't produce as much voltage as the magnesium-copper cells (less than half I believe), but this way I get to experiment without putting money out for materials. I recently made 24 of these. They each put out over half a volt and I forget how many milliamps, just 1 to a few I think. I wanted to keep them hooked up to prove to myself they can keep going and do something useful because I have many naysayers trying to discourage me in my life. So, I decided on a nightlight. I have a LED bicycle light kit that uses 3 volts that I'm not using on a bicycle any time soon. So, made three groups of 8 of these in series to increase volts and put those groups in parallel to increase amps. That's over 4 volts and I suppose maybe 6 milliamps , enough to light up the 2 leds in the bicycle kit. I've had it going for about 24 hours and expect it to be brightly lit for at least a week before I start possibly seeing it dim (due to moisture and corrosion usually). I've been away from these for a while, but if I remember right, I'm going about these wrong. If you're making them completely dry, you're supposed to let them thoroughly dry and grow the crystals out, then seal them before using them. SInce I didn't do that, mine are probably galvanic-crystal cells right now. Oops. Oh well, I need the fresh experience of this process since I've been away a year. I'll watch them and try to learn.
I'm considering buying some Borax and alum and add those to the mix too when I make more of these to see how that does. Maybe that mix will perform better or be better at keeping away corrosion, I don't know. Maybe even chili powder, since Allwest has had some "magical" results with that in the past.

Again, I wish I knew Allwest's recipe for his new rechargeable cells. I realize they are rechargeable batteries, not crystal cells, though they may in fact be acting as both, I don't know. I have a bedini imhotep charger I made and would love to get his latest experimental recipe. If he's keeping it quiet, I'd love to know why he's keeping it quiet, but maybe he's keeping it quiet why he's keeping it quiet, to avoid controversy or other complications, which I think I can understand.

[mscoffman]

Yes I would be touchy about using magnesium metal because of it's tendency to catch fire and burn in air. A real battery might
expose it to those conditions.  But if you lookup the Electronegativity table on Wikipedia, You can see that Ti titanium is almost
as electronegative as magnesium. It has some resistivity but in real use in a battery it might hang on a copper core.
The other side of the table is W (wolfram) tungsten metal. Gold and platinum are best but unavailable. It's one way to get
your battery voltage up. I would be disinclined to add pure organics even though people have had some success using
vitamin C and aspirin and EDTA. I am concerned that using alcohols and bleach might create a situation where volatiles
simply evaporate away. User ibpointless2 did a lot of interesting stuff and he was receiving coodos from other people.
I would like to ask him some questions but he seems not been on here in a while. Yes, As you probably expect I believe
that there is a continuum amount strong electrolyte storage batteries with their charged and discharged state, weak electrolyte
cells with their standing voltage and crystal cells with their links to petrolithic energy. It may be best to combine a mix of all
three rather then have primary batteries that simply exhaust themselves to very near zero power.

Well, keep up the good work.

:S:MarkSCoffman

[halfvulcan]

Thanks Allwest for your work. I'm clinging to your Youtube channel and looking back here hoping you'll post something new.  Even if your rechargeable cell doesn't jump all the hurdles, I think it's really going in the right direction anyway. So, what's the recipe? Or maybe I'm being too presumptive. Maybe I should be asking what I saw someone else ask: will you ever be open-sourcing it?

[halfvulcan]

Should I make my own particular testing a seperate topic? Imo Allwest (and whatever other big names were to show up) should have the spotlight.
But, anyway, update on my "wire cells". The lights were dimming and I'm seeing holes being eaten in the aluminum. Based on past experience, this was somewhat expected. I should have let these sit for a while before using them. So that's what I'm going to do at this point. I'll let them do what they will while not using them to power anything. I'll let the crystals establish themselves naturally for a bout a week. Then at that point, I'll probably add another couple layers of aluminum foil to reinforce and fill in where holes were eaten by galvanic processes. I guess then I'll also seal them with layers of paint.

[Google]

I read in a post that in early 1900s there was a company supplying batteries to telephone companies and the company had to close business as there were no repeat orders due to extremely long battery life. It didnt need recharging at all.

This is cystal cell thread but IMHO its relevant to mention it here.

Ultimately all crystal cells are galvanic in nature. They will never work in zero humidity.