Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[jeanna]

Hi all,

I heard myself suggesting magnetite again last night and I decided to go for it myself. You know, of course, no one else is going to do my experiment for me... 
I just ordered 2 oz. to try this.

So, here is my idea and the reasoning behind it.

I will lay down a layer of magnetite on top of a prepared surface of sodium silicate (my new favorite). This will be on a small plate of some metal, perhaps steel or copper. I will not use Alu because sodium silicate turns Alu into H₂ gas ( )

Then I guess I will load it up with sparks from my wimhurst machine. I am very unsure about the wimhurst machine for doing this but it is the only apparatus I have for this...

Well, I may just put it in line with a battery to allign all the crystals magnetically, if that is possible.... again I am really unsure and unconvinced about this part.

Maybe I will even try a magnet for alignment...

With those concerns aside, this is my reasoning for my choice of materials and structure of the cell.

We are looking for a crystal that will continuously put out a voltage and current.

When we accomplish this feat I would expect that because of this current within the crystal that there will be a magnetic field associated with it.

So, my thinking is that the magnetite must already have a current in it and if I can align it coherently, the current may pass from one crystal to another from one end or terminal to the other.


I will also make this on a substrate of hide glue (my previous favorite) on an Aluminum plate. Hide glue is a protein gel. I guess being a gel puts it into the category of a protein polymer. (I am guessing here. I don't know if the term polymer is chemically correct here, but you know what I mean.)

This protein gel won't dissolve the Alu so this thing could be made on this cheaper metal. Hide glue does get brittle, however, and when it is dry it may form cracks. We'll see.

OK. now, to wait for the magnetite.  (mmm this gives me time to clean up the kitchen - er - lab from the Alu experiments of last year.)

jeanna

[sutra]

Hi all,
A short update on my cell:

freezed for 5 hrs, voltage showed 0,000 V, after a while, the meter started  measuring some minus Voltage (polarity inversion) down to - 0,060 V, after 5 hours, the cell pumps - 0,013 V but the voltage rises if exposed to the heat of the hands and reaches up to + 0,020 V reacting to pressure on the central elecrode reaching around + 0.040 V. left alone drops again to the initial voltage.

Conclusions: I guess the polarization is somehow better than the one achieved with low voltages but not perfect and I really think that the components ratio and composition must be wrong. I'll give the mix another shot with HV DC this time...I lately got some goodies...first directly then as suggested by Koen1.

Does any of you have an idea of a probable practical application for the cell as is?

@ Jeanna

your procedure sounds complicated like a french cake recipe.....I wonder if I would ever want ti try one of your silica-magna-cakes......
jokes apart, I'm curious to know the outcome...interesting.

Cheers

[Koen1]

@Sutra: well, you could use it as a low energy electret already...
Just like the kitty litter cells, you could connect them to capacitors
via the right diodes, and wire up a couple of such cells, and the
accumulated charge on the capacitor can then be used as output
(either by periodic discharge or by controlled low current discharge,
using a simply resistor, or by more complex means).

Our "collegue" Marcus Reid showed me a small LCD clock
that he's had running for some time now, which is powered directly
from the output of 3 small Cells. I seem to recall they were
simply wired in series.
But the "classic" way in which electrets and Browns petroelectric
units were wired was by simply using diodes suited to the voltage
produced by the cells, and then wiring them to a capacitor via
those diodes, then using the charge on the cap for output.
So that's something you might try?

@Jeanna: You ordered Magnetite? Would it not have been easier
to just take FeO (black) and Fe2O3 (brown to red, "rust coloured" iron oxide)
and mix them together?
(Magnetite = Fe3O4 = FeO+Fe2O3 = Wurtzite + Hematite =
"Iron Black powder" + "Iron Red powder")
Well, ok, perhaps not, if you don't have any of them lying around...

May I ask what line of thought you are following, that you are planning
to make a silicate - magnetite "layer cake"?
I have used both FeO and Fe2O3, and mixes, in a few of my silicate
Cell experiments. My reasoning was that, if I could get the ferro-
and ferri-magnetic molecules to align and maintain the magnetic field
inside the Cell (by using a permanent magnet stuck to the bottom,
or around it, or both), these molecules and grains or magnetic material
should have circular electrical currents or at least charges moving in
circles, and addition of semiconductive material, dopant, and polarisation
might just produce a sort of semiconductive diode structure with constant
charge circulation in small local areas of the material, which with a lot
of luck might just be partially rectified by the p-n arranged semiconductor,
and produce measurable output at slightly higher amperage.
So far I haven't had much success, although one of such Cells which was
a hybrid between my basic silicate Cells and this concept and in which
I also used quite some Cobalt oxide has turned out to be just as good as,
or perhaps in some minute way marginally better even, than my best
conditioned silicate Cells. But then again, that Cell has only been taken
from the dryer box about 10 months ago, so I shouldn't get overexcited yet.
It does look very cool blueish, with all that Cobalt in it.
So perhaps Cobalt blue powder is something you might want to try as well then,
as long as you're playing with magnetic powders? Ok, Cobalt is slightly
unhealthy (understatement!) so you must watch out not to accidentally
ingest some. But hey, you  shouldn't accidentally ingest any of that
silicate powder either, and that seems to pose little problem.
You could try the other magnetic materials too, like Nickel, Palladium, etc?

[jeanna]

Koen,

Thanks for sharing all this history of your "magnetite" experiments.

You may have saved me some time.

The magnetite I am getting is lodestone. It is magnetic in that it creates a magnetic field already. There are degrees of this and for my first order I just bought the normal quality. The guy says his normal quality is very good. I will see.

The first part of the thinking is the shape of the magnetite powder. It is octahedral. each piece looks like a double pyramid. I didn't mention that yesterday.

I was thinking of making a thin layer of magnetite on a thin layer of sodium silicate (semiconductor) on a square or round piece of stainless steel then also on copper.(2 cells to try) with some kind of central terminal.

I first thought of charging with a magnet also. But I didn't think that would  do anything because there is already a magnetic field. It might just align the thing magnetically, but then I would have just a magnet. So, that is why I thought I would spark it with the wimhurst machine. But I will try both.

There are ideas for terminals. I have not decided yet.

I think we have all noticed that the current in these cells moves radially. This means to me that a toroid shape is the full shape of the field/fields.

In a cell I made last spring, I wrapped Alu foil around the circumference. It was a good terminal for a while - until the Alu dissolved! But that cell had many terminals in it and this outside one plus any other was always better than any 2 from inside the cell.

That was a cell made in a plastic cream cheese tub. The diameter was 2 1/2", 7cm filled about 1", 3cm deep.

The tricky part of this is that if I use a metal plate (instead of a plastic cheese tub)  there needs to be a separation from the plate to the terminal, and that would add other factors like... Is this a capacitor now?... or is it a galvanic reaction now? It was a reason I used the plastic tub last year.

Maybe I should make one on a plastic cheese tub lid. hmm I think so.

OK now, that is 3 cells. 

Now, it starts to get really wild, like, am I making a toroid of circulating magnetic field? and if so, can I make a transformer/filter to capture the current?  egads, it is too nuts.

I will just start simple and progress from there.

Thanks for getting me to express my thoughts.

---------

Cobalt sounds interesting. I wonder if I could get cobalt artists pigment?  When I awoke this morning I started thinking of looking for tourmaline dust or pyrite dust. Maybe they use this kind of dust for artists too. (I will let our friend Igor... er.. Ian do the grinding thing. Sutra as we know is sitting atop a pile of gems, so his gem polisher does this grinding trick for him.  )

I forgot to mention yesterday that I got some cream of tartar; so, I can now make some rochelle salt. But first, I will see what happens with the 3 ingredients I outlined, and go from there.



jeanna

[sutra]

@ Jenna
Yes, I'm sitting on a pile of gems and the little Sutra within me does the grinding.....for me gem dust is not a problem, it is a trouble...you should see my lab: a mission to keep it clean...luckly there is my wife....ihihihihihi.....just kidding....


@ all

Interesting news about my latest cell: it can FLY....

Yes, I wish.

The interesting thing about it is that the voltage increased slightly as yesterday I heat it up a little with my blow torch (probably as hot as 50° C) the voltage went up thanks to the "blue-green" tourmaline dust in it. Well, the increase of voltage is normal while heating the cell and was going back to the original output with the cooling, but it is intriguing that the cell is showing "memory" like behaviour the day after: today the output is back to the values reached while heating... 0,157V with an amperage of 0,026 mA.

I now heat it again reaching 0,3 V to see what happens.

If the fenomenon is stable and effective, by the end of the next year, I'll be able to power up the town of Rome with it....

Cheers