KARPEN PILE

[profitis]

Graphite is useless as a H2 sponge,it has monster overpotential.you can replace Ag with graphite as cathode in the gadget. Palladized silver will self-discharge it can't be used,that's why I'm against plating of anything. 1) the electrolyte has nothing to do with overpotential difference in the same cell its just to carry charge.eg phosphoric acid works fine instead of sulfuric in karpens original.as long as there's no corrosion current its ok. 2) yes but its all crammed onto 1cm2. 3) the cv scans only tell some of the picture not all of it which is why I wasn't too interested in them.overpotentialdifference is all that matters.there's no real way of predicting overpotential so they make lists for us. pt was just chosen as our standard. 4)H atoms are very unstable on Ag,recombining quite fast during rest.

[profitis]

I've already given a description of a nickel cell here pomodoro,what do you think,should we collect the prize and split it? Harti wants 1 watt I believe

[pomodoro]

Now need to put ag sponge on the silver.  Oh it was the silver I replaced, I kept the PD/pt for all tests.

[MarkE]

Yesterday, the graphite was giving many 10's or peak mA and a constant current of 2mA when shorted through the meter. Quite impressive. However, I recall that I was bubbling the hydrogen constantly, not diverting it to the top of the flask after having saturated the solution.

Today, I cathodized it in a separate KOH beaker, with a Pt counter electrode and a power supply, just to clean it with fresh H2 bubbles.

When I dipped it in the cell and waited a while, a whopping 1.2V developed. WOW I thought , but as you saw each time it was used it never recovered.  I'm not sure but I guess it cant sponge up the hydrogen from the solution very well.

I also tried palladized silver. Again excellent fresh from the beaker, but quickly died down as well.
Same thing for shiny platinum, got zero volts real fast.

I still need to try lead,nickel,copper and a few others.

So Mr Profitus, I must admit that you did come up with a system that seems to work well at this stage of the research! well done!!!

Back to the basics,  everyone, lets start from step 1.

1.  Why alkaline and not acid as used by Kapern?  I realize  it lowers  the E of the H/H2O couple - well it did as Nernst would have predicted at the Pt, from 0 to -800mV.  I dont know about the shift at the Silver.


2. The Pd/Pt voltage is very rock steady when discharging, no wonder a similar electrode is used as the zero volt standard. The 1cm square has in reality a much larger surface area.


3. The silver is another story.  What formula exactly can be used to predict the voltage that I would expect there?  Is it the same as the platinum plus the hydrogen overpotential on silver?  I need to read the paper on the studies of this overpotential, but I did not think it was as huge as 0.9V.  Even the CV scans I did did not show such a massive difference in the cathodic scans.


4. Why does the silver electrode look more like a capacitor , being charged up by the Pt/Pd when they are connected, which then slowly discharges upon disconnection?

A capacitor effect suggests to me that a dielectric layer is forming at the surface of one or both electrodes.

[profitis]

Anodize-cathodize the Ag in Na2CO3 sol for spongey pomodoro.you are going to double or triple power out.I wonder what rhodium anode would do???