Meyer type WFC - from design and fabrication to test and development.

[Farrah Day]

I'ts been a couple of days since I've had chance to get out to my workshop, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I found today.  It seems successful.

2 days  ago I had my large test cell submerged in tap water with an added flat teaspoon of calcium carbonate (after trying calcium sulphate and calcium hydroxide to no avail). It was running for 4 hours at 0.5 amp, before I removed it to let it dry.

Today is the first time I've looked at it since, and it has an extremely good white coating on it.  It's sometimes difficult to see when the cell is wet, so drying is the only way to see how good the coating really is.

Interesting note: The first thing I did was test the voltage across the cell. It read 1.55 volts.  In past experiments my large test cell would normally totally discharge when left to dry on the bench overnight, now however, after 2 days drying out on the bench it still reads 1.55 volts!

I've just refreshed the water, added another flat teaspoon of calcium carbonate and popped the cell back in. Set the power supply current at 0.5 amp dc (around 15 volts). Will let it run for another 4 hours before I take it out to dry. Will then post a photo once it's nicely dried.

In the meantime, here's a link to some interesting reading: http://www.powerlabs.org/waterarc.htm

[Farrah Day]

Test cell update:

2 hour check up on my test cell in the calcium carbonate electrolyte, and the cell - even wet - visibly shows the white coating.  The electrolyte is milky white, no sign of any scum yet.

I left the cell drawing 0.5 amp at 15 volt, but is now reading 0.33 amp, so I've upped again to 0.5 amp, now at around 20 volts.  This would seem to indicate that the white coating is indeed increasing the internal resistance of my cell.

Will check again in a few more hours.

[AhuraMazda]

Farrah Day
While you are waiting take a look at this;
http://www.qveng.com/cavitation.html

By the way Meyer had many fault:
Greedy
Over come by religion
Not able to perceive the whole world as one
Generally a biggot!

But my money is still on him.

[Tacmatricx]

Hi All,

If you want to test the survivability of Aluminum tubes... you could set up a mini test using Aluminum foil. The last time I tried it I added a bit of table salt to the water to speed up the reaction and the Cathode (Oxygen Producing plate) was eaten in an hour while the Anode was only tarnished... This could have been due to the NaCl I added as I confirmed the presence of Chlorine gas but i'm pretty sure Aluminum is not to be used for the Cathode.

[Farrah Day]

Tac, I wasn't suggesting using ali electrodes, I was merely emphasising a possible similarity between what we are getting on conditioning and that of wet electrolytic capacitors. The electrolyte used in these capacitors is not water, and they certainly don't want gases given off or dielectric breakdown.

As per your experiment, I would expect that adding a metal salt to the water to form the electrolyte, would indeed pose you problems.

While in tap water I would expect the aluminium to be fairly unreactive due to it's protective oxide layer, it would appear to be less stable under electrolysis than ss.

It is however the cathode that gives rise to H2, not O2 - that's at the anode. Or in your case chlorine at the anode.

I expect there would be a production of corrosive sodium hydroxide within the solution to eat away at the electrode.