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[IotaYodi]

A way to keep the rust out of the connections

Must be electrolysis from too much moisture in the air. Id make sure your soldering iron and solder is not contaminated first. You may be able to use liquid tape to keep the air and moisture out. Never tried that though with electronics.
http://www.thetapeworks.com/liquid-tape.htm

[Taylor1992]

I just ordered one of those ultra-capacitors off ebay for $50 plus shipping. 3000 Farads at 2.7 volts! A little over a 4th of the energy stored in a AA battery!

I would recommend trying that as a substitute for the batteries and the super caps.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370416238952&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

[Pirate88179]

I just ordered one of those ultra-capacitors off ebay for $50 plus shipping. 3000 Farads at 2.7 volts! A little over a 4th of the energy stored in a AA battery!

I would recommend trying that as a substitute for the batteries and the super caps.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370416238952&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

There is much more power available in your boost cap than an AA battery.  My 650 F cap is rated at over 3,000 amps.  Try getting that out of an AA.  I have no idea what the specs are on your 3,000 F cap but I am guessing much higher than that.

That is a very good price for that cap.  I want one.

The other things these caps do better than a battery is to store the spikes created by bemf as from a JT circuit, EB or similar.  I believe you can capture more power with these things than with a bat.

Best of luck with your large super boost cap.  Looking forward to seeing your work.

Bill

[Taylor1992]

Well, actually... A farad is in essence, an amp second.
So a standard alkaline AA battery holds about 2.8 amp-hours.
An amp-hour is 3,600 amp-seconds.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
So it's essentially 3600 x 2.8 = 10080 Farads in a AA battery.
But because of the internal resistance of the battery, it cannot ever produce 3000 amps.
However, If I wired a fully charged AA battery up to this 3000 Farad ultra-capacitor, it isn't even going to charge it up to the battery's 1.5 volts. Simply because the battery voltage decreases as it is discharged.
But the energy is still in the battery, even if the voltage is too low to charge the capacitor.
That's where the Joule Thief comes in, and THAT'S why these JT circuits run so damn long!
Dead batteries are "DEAD" because their voltage is too low for a device to function, not because they are "dead", because they're really not dead.
The Joule Thief circuit allows us to pull all of the batteries stored Farads, Coulomb, whatever you want to call it, OUT of the battery.

For example.
If you lit an LED with two AA batteries, it would not last NEAR as long as a LED on a JT circuit.
That's not because the batteries "die", it's simply because their combined voltage dropped below the 3 volts required to light the LED.
So all of their Farads of stored energy are still in there, but the voltage is too low for us to use.

That's why you can only charge the ultra-cap to like 1 volt with the battery alone, but with the JT circuit, you can now use those batteries down to .3 volts!
I get the Cap in the mail in the next few days, I should be able to theoretically charge it up maybe three times to maximum capacity of 2.7 volts at 3000 Farads.

I will let you know the results! 

[Pirate88179]

I do not disagree with what you are saying here.  The numbers speak for themselves.

As for the JT circuit, I am very familiar with most of them and have built many.

My point was that if you put the spikes into a battery (rechargeable) and put the same spikes into a super cap or boost cap, you will end up with more usable energy in the cap.

My EER or earth battery, puts out like 1.9 volts at about 19 mA's.  But yet, I can fully charge my 650 F boostcap to its 2.7 volts.  How is this possible I wondered.  Well, when I put my scope on the EB I saw all of those very high spikes and that, in my opinion, is what was doing the "extra" charging.

Having lit 400 leds from a single "dead" AA battery, I know what a good JT circuit can do.  It was only when I added the supercaps into the mix that I was able to do much more than I ever could with any battery.

I am envious of your new 3,000 F cap.  I will own one one day soon, I hope.  With a good JT circuit you can charge it for free from solar, EB, wind, etc. and light leds for a very, very long time.

This is fun stuff for sure.

Bill