Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[ian middleton]

G'day all, and what a day it was.

Made 2 cells, one with my pyrites mix and the other with just quartz sand  and concentrated precrystaline rochelle solution.
The body of the sand cell has hardend but there is a pool of liquid on top with crystals forming in it.

I had to suspend the Cu electrode into the body of the pyrites cell because the mix remained fluid for some time. It has begun to crystalize and become quite firm. Now we wait.

@AbbaRue:   Even if you use the same metal for the electrodes only one will become oxidized because of the polarization voltage.
The achilles heel of these crystal batteries is the galvanic reaction associated with dissimilar metal electrodes. A galvanic voltage can mask any real crystal battery activity for months possibly years.  Even with my best cells one has to wonder what percentage of the output could be due to residual galvanic action.

To minimise this I tend to use same metal electrodes, however, depending on the mix, it is possible due to ion migration to end up with two dissimilar plates shortly after the polarizing voltage has been applied. I proved this with my Bentonite clay mix when  the small amount of copper dopant migrated through the matrix and deposited itself on the Aluminium casing.

This is why I feel preconditioning the electrodes first is very important.

Liquid diodes are good... a liquid lunch is better   

All the best

Ian

[Phil7218]

@mdmiller Rochelle salt is a ferroelectricum, that means it can hold permanent charge like a permanent magnet can hold magnetism. If you want to polarise the rochelle salt you have to warm it up over its curie temperature, for rochelle salt it's 24 Ã,°C, and then you let it cool down while HV is applied on the crystals (warning rochelle salt has two curie points -18 Ã,°C and 24 Ã,°C). With HV I mean 10 - 25 kV. You can easily  generate HV with a flyback transformer and a simply built up circuit. http://old.4hv.org/index.php?board=18;action=display;threadid=1723
You can find flybacks in old TV's or monitors, I don't know your local electronic suppliers, but you should also be able to buy them somewhere. Don't be afraid of the HV, If you don't touch anything or just with long insulating things while operating nothing harmful will happen to you.

@AbbaRue Al2O3 is no semiconductor it's a very good isolator. What you are doing is electrolytic rectifying. If you want to improve that you should use sulfur acid instead of a baking soda solution, because baking soda reacts alkaline and destroys the Al2O3-layer of the Aluminium which is important  for electrolytic rectifying. Zinc oxid and Copper oxid are indeed semiconductors, but that has less to do with electrolytic things, that's a different process. Many compounds of transition metalls are semiconducters, like Pyrit, Galena, Hämatit, Magnetit, Rutil ... In old detector radios a Pyrit or Galena crystals with a copper wire put on the crystal were used as diodes. They were simple schottky diodes.

[Koen1]

Thanks Phil. But we know this already.

And I may be having a dumb stroke here, but what is the difference between
using freshly made but not yet solidified homemade Rochelle salt, and
using ready-made Rochelle salt in molten form ? 
Seems like the difference between water and molten ice to me...

I mean, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, to make Rochelle
aka Seignette salt aka potassium sodium tartrate, you first heat
the potassium bitartrate in some water, then add the sodium carbonate
to the hot solution, untill it no longer fizzes when you add it, and then
you leave it to cool and solidify into a chunk of Rochelle salt... right?
So now, if the solution has stopped fizzing but is still liquid, it is simply
molten Rochelle salt with some water in it.
I fail to see how that is different from taking the solidified salt and melting it...
Except of course the water content, but that's the only difference I see...

I can imagine that different reactions can occur and different compounds may form
if we were to mix all the other ingredients with the potassium bitartrate
solution before we add the sodium carbonate... Although it is of course
equally possible that the stuff then no longer turns into Rochelle salts

What am I missing?

[ian middleton]

G'day all,

@Koen: On the face of it there should be no difference between using molten salt as opposed to the newly prepared stuff.
The little test I have going at the moment will tell us ( in a month or two  ). A quick check under the microscope should show us
if cooling molten salt forms similar crystal structure as "virgin " crystals. Might make a difference 
Anyway as I said, we'll have to wait. This test has novelty value only at this time.

Now about mixing all the ingredients together before the sodium carbonate...... Hmmm   

See you later

Ian

[AbbaRue]

@Phil
I was using the info on the following link as a basis for stating that aluminum oxide is a semiconductor.
http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/ntype-nr.htm
He made a homemade tunnel diode by placing a steal wire against a piece of aluminum.
He even includes an oscilliscope picture.
Aluminum oxide is also known as Sapphire, and Sapphire is another natural crystal
like quartz that can be used to make crystal oscillators.
I know Sapphire and Quartz are both good insulators,
so perhaps something else is going on there.

I'm working on a cell of my own, but it uses different compounds then others are using here.
So not to throw off this forum I will make measurements first before posting my findings.
My cells are taking a while to dry as well. I am getting over 700mV.
But I think it might be chemical output.

Keep up the good work, and hopefully together we can get a cell that works.