Working Air Battery

[conradelektro]

@ Pete (Idl4)  -- I am very impressed by the Amperage of your cells!

One could put your magic mixture 

(4 cups of water 1 tbl spoon of salt and about another tbl spoon of baking soda.)

in a plastic container and submerge two different metals in it (e.g. aluminium cans and lots of copper wire from old cables). If one seals the container fairly well this should last many days if not months.

Wet paper is o.k., but may be one should go all the way to very simple "wet cells" for a stationary home built battery (simple as the liquid is concerned, no acids, no fancy chemicals; just water, salt and soda). The optimal amount of salt and soda should be found in order to avoid waste.

The shape of the metals is then not critical, as long as they are covered by the liquid and do not touch. This should reduce the work needed to prepare the metals. Pieces of plastic could keep the metals appart.

This is of course classic text book stuff, but why not, as long as it is simple and cheap. The "progress" is the recycling of metals and the simplicity of the set up. It does not hurt that the chemical reactions are known since a long time.

The idea is not an "industry" or "money making by new inventions", but some savings and primarily enjoyment by using home made batteries for low energy applications like radios, charging hand held phones and music players or for vintage lights.

It is efficient to re-use thrown away materials. And the Joule Thief type circuits solve the "voltage transformation".

Ideas are floating around in my head.

Greetings, Conrad

[jeanna]

@Pete,

Where did you get that magnesium plate?

I was referring to the crystal cells when I said they made H₂ gas.
Stephan made a suggestion once which I tried and which worked very well.

It was Al foil and C graphite from a pencil. (I think charcoal doesn't work well??)
I needed to make 2 in series to light a led, but it worked for quite a long time, like 2-3 days. It is on localjoe's thread which started out as an earth battery thread.
I am sure it could have lit a led with a joule thief circuit, but that was before I knew how to do that.

I used sodium carbonate for the electrolyte in the water.
It is a little more active than bi-carbonate and really worked.
The Al foil got gunked blackened, and probably it would have continued to work if I had cleaned it.

@all,
I was searching for magnesium yesterday and came across information that magnesium is alloyed in the aluminum of soda cans to make them more flexible and easier to form. There is not much, but it should make the Al more active.
BUT
remember you must scrape the plastic from the interior of the cans or you will get nada.

So, maybe a carbon rod or a copper pipe wrapped with salted paper and then dropped into a scorched soda can.
Maybe some fiberglass insulation or old T-shirts could be used to fill the space in the can so it would not need to be filled with liquid, but just be damp.

Right!
WE can recycle our own cans... and make our own power at the same time!
(and we can seed the gulf waters with oil eating microbes too)

,

jeanna

[PeteIdl4]

@Maw2432,

Thanks and yes, the copper is bare 22Ga wire.


@Conrad,

Thanks. I like the idea of using cans and old copper from wire to make a wet cell, should be simple enough to make a configuration of cells that will give you a decent amount of power. I also agree I need to work on finding just the right balance on the mixture used to increase efficiency and reduce waste like you said.

The thing I love about using the paper towel idea is that you don't have to use a lot of water to get good current out of a cell, as evidenced even the natural air carries enough moisture to power the cells, and when it dries one could simply store it for use another day and wont be constantly corroding all the time. In my early experiments with magnesium I learned first hand how fast water eats through it. With magnesium I think air batteries is the way to go to prolong its life.

I really do like the idea of a wet cell using metals just laying around and discarded. I'll try to work on something along these lines also, but that would have to be another topic.

@Jeanna,

The magnesium is one of those fire starter plates. I bought a few off ebay a while back I can't remember how much I payed I don't think it was too much though.

Interesting experiment with the Al foil and graphite in sodium carbonate. Thanks for sharing, and yeah I'm sure a JTC would have really worked well.

Just a side note on the aluminum can thing, it's funny I didn't scrape anything off it and it still worked. Now you got me thinking about how much power I could get if I had scraped the inside. 

@all,

update on the plate cell I did last night, it's been running for about 10 hours now, no additional water although it's only running at about half brightness now, we'll see how it holds up throughout the rest of the day. Thanks again to everyone.

-Pete

[maw2432]

@ all

Magnesium Firestarters   are available at Walmart for $7.00

Even less online....

http://www.vitacost.com/Coghlans-Magnesium-Fire-Starter?csrc=BRDC-056389078703

Bill

[Pirate88179]

The fire starter blocks are available at harbor freight for under $3.00.  If you can catch them on special, they are even less.

Bill