Meyer's Resonant Charging Circuit Analysed

[twohawks]

I have not had time to really study the cct, but I am wondering if electronics-knowledgable folks here can investigate and comment...

My questions are... is there some viability to a notion that the diode in question, presumed by most to have been purposefully drawn into Meyer's circuit backwards, may have been intended to be a varactor diode?  (Maybe that's what he was hiding, if in fact it is not apparent, or maybe its practically a ridiculous question?)  What would one project the affects to be if this function were to be theorized in a cct such as this?

Would some of you electronics wizards look at the circuit with this notion in mind, scratch your heads over it, and comment on this, please.

In relation to this question, I found the following posting very interesting.
http://hamslife.blogspot.com/2007/04/diode-designed-to-act-as-capacitor.html
and also here: http://www.wannatinker.com/DIODES.htm (near the end)

Boy I wish I had time to actually study this and participate in real scientific fashion (and I hope to in the coming year).  I hope this question (no matter how potentially irrelevant, I simply do not know) lends something useful to the effort.

Cheers,
TwoHawks

[Farrah Day]

Locked-in, personally, I'm not even going to consider acoustic resonance at this point in my research and experimentation as it is 'possibly' just an unnecessary complication to an already complex subject.

Zippy, we all I think can agree that tap water conducts too readily to be anything close to an acceptable dielectric, and indeed this was initially what caused me to ridicule Meyer's 'water capacitor' technical briefs.  But, on now seeing the conditioning of electrodes and indeed the insulating compound that forms on the cathode, it is clear that we are not relying on the tap water to act as a dielectric, we're actually producing our own.  The water then simply effectively becomes an extension of the anode.  When I considered the protective oxide layer present on ss I had assumed it to be the anode whose oxide layer was enhancing during conditioning, but this seems not to be the case.

Anyway, with a true dielectric layer on our cathode we do indeed now have a genuine 'wet electrolytic capacitor'.

So now it's just really about figuring out what we want to happen from here on and then designing a cct to achieve our goal. It really does kind of makes sense to create a cct to do what you require of it, rather than create a cct first hoping it will do something interesting.

Garfield, I'm sure your aware then that what Meyer actually depicts is a 'dc series resonant charging cct', exactly what they use to fire Tesla coils.  Now, irrespective of what Meyer states, I don't believe this cct can charge up a capacitor to more than twice the supply voltage. So if we want high voltage pulses across our wfc, then we have to use some form of transformer, or start with a very high supply voltage in the first place. Would you agree?

So, I guess we must ask ourselves, if Meyer's wfc worked, but he lacked the knowledge to explain it, how exactly did it work? What reactions are taking place, and why?

It's a shame that the folks that have already experimented with conditioned electrodes no longer frequent this forum as it would possibly provide us all with a jump start.  My first question would be, with conditioned electrodes, will normal dc electrolysis still work?  Of course, if that insulating dielectric layer is present on the cathode, by rights the cell should no longer pass dc. The other thing is, I know from my experiments that ss electrodes hold a charge for at least 12 hours (that cannot be shorted out), but what charge will a conditioned cell hold?

Now, if we apply a pulsed voltage at a frequency in which the inductor's inductive reactance cancels our wfc's capacitive reactance, where exactly does that take us? High current, low voltage. Not I think where we need to be going. The point I might be missing about the individual voltages being near infinite at resonance, is interesting. I will research this further.

Now I'm only playing with ideas at present, hopefully I'll be able to apply some of this in practice soon. But for now, what then if we take advantage of the fact that capacitors exhibit high reactance to low frequencies and also the fact that the voltage across the inductor in a series resonant LC cct will lead the current by 90 degrees.

Therefore, not only will our wfc provide a high impedance to current flow but the voltage will cause ions to migrate to the electrodes within the water in our wfc, well before the cct charge carriers (electrons and holes) get there.  Hence, by the time the electrons and holes arrive at the electrodes, the voltage potential to push and pull them has gone.  Now I might well be missing something, and hence totally wrong in my theorising, but if this is the case, then with every pulse, the leading voltage would be attracting ions to the wfc electrodes, followed by a surge of charge carriers lacking the potential to do any real work.  Eventually there comes a point whereby the electrostatic charges on the plates are are so great that the dielectric compound on the cathode will break down on the next voltage pulse.  Now, with such a surplus of charges already on the plates and an equal amount of ions waiting in the water, when the dielectric does breakdown the water will very, very rapidly ionise.  However, as there is such a surplus of charges already waiting on the electrodes, no extra charges (ie no current surge) will be experienced by the supply.

On the other hand, if we applied high frequency pulses to the set up, this would mean that 'if and when' the electrode dielectric breaks down, the inductor would provide a high impedance and hence by it's very nature inhibit current flow through the cct.

In either case, if I'm anywhere in the right vicinity with this, it would mean that the last thing we want to achieve is the resonant frequency.

[oystla]

Farrah,

Your statement
"Now, irrespective of what Meyer states, I don't believe this cct can charge up a capacitor to more than twice the supply voltage."

is again fundamentally wrong.

An LC series circuit can produce dangerously high voltage.

An example can be found at;

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_2/chpt_6/3.html

which states:

"
A word of caution is in order with series LC resonant circuits: because of the high currents which may be present in a series LC circuit at resonance, it is possible to produce dangerously high voltage drops across the capacitor and the inductor, as each component possesses significant impedance. We can edit the SPICE netlist in the above example to include a plot of voltage across the capacitor and inductor to demonstrate what happens: (Figure below)

Plot of Vc=V(2,3) 70 V peak, VL=v(3) 70 V peak, I=I(V1#branch) 0.532 A peak

According to SPICE, voltage across the capacitor and inductor reach a peak somewhere around 70 volts! This is quite impressive for a power supply that only generates 1 volt. Needless to say, caution is in order when experimenting with circuits such as this
"

The poing here is energy transfer between the components

For a capacitor Energy stored = 0,5 *C * V^2

C= capacitance
V= voltage

For an inductor: Energy stored= 0,5*L*I^2

L= inductance
I= current flow, amperage

Then knowing that the inductor will transfer all of its energy to the capacitor at circuit resonant frequency, the voltage can easily rise to high values dependent on the values of C, L and inductor amperage.

[z_p_e]

All this guesswork would be unnecessary if the wfc element (including the oxide layer) was empirically determined, and modeled.

[Garfield]

Farahday:

"I'm sure your aware then that what Meyer actually depicts is a 'dc series resonant charging cct', exactly what they use to fire Tesla coils.  Now, irrespective of what Meyer"

There is no such animal as a 'dc series resonant circuit' because resonant circuits do not respond to dc.  However you can have an ac signal super-imposed onto a dc component. The resonant circuit still ignores the dc and goes about it's normal business.
With regards to the diode. Without a filtering network, they  only lop off the negative or positive portion of the signal but will still remain an ac signal with a dc component. If you lop off the negative going portion it is still alternating between zero volts & the peak volt level. Again, the resonant circuit could care less.
   In Meyers circuit, looks like he's using that diode so as not to lose the positive charge on the anode when the voltage returns to zero. I don't think it's necessary and he only put it in as a precaution.  Help or confusion?

Garfield