Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[mrbr00k5]

@Koen
Hi Koen, great to finally hear from you! So you've been off working on radioactive generators or something huh, sounds like a typical day at this forum! Great to have you back on this thread!
@All
I've been needing to post an update on what's going on with my projects, but I've been so busy lately, and today is no exception, but I'll try to get an update posted within a day or so, hopefully sooner.

[ian middleton]

G'Day all.

@Koen, good to see you back mate. The cell that looks to be working is 4-2009. Come the 9th of December it would have been running the digital watch for a year. I measured it's voltage in September and it was 1.149 volts and supplying 25uA to the watch.
I believe the watch has a lot to do with the longevity of this battery. It seems to be feeding back a 32Khz ripple across the cell, may even be stimulating it. Anyway I can't see this cell packing up anytime soon.

My health issues have returned unfortunately and that has slowed things right down but as you may have seen , there are some very cluey guys on here keeping things rolling along.

I have just measured the pyrite cell and that is 0.195v and the sulphur cell ( we all remember that one  ) is at 0.275v . these cells are over 3 years old now.

Should I get back to building again I will be concentating on a Marcus Reid type doped semiconductor unit. I did have some success with zinc oxide as the dopant ( nice band gap).

Anyway thats it for now, good to hear from you again Koen. Keep in touch.
Regards  Ian.

[mrbr00k5]

@mscoffman
I just noticed in an older post that you were first to recommend calcium chloride, that was a good call, it works quite nicely in crystal cells.

@All

Hello everyone, time for an update! First off, my little blue led box is still working quite nicely. And my crystal cell flashlight is still working quite well. I've included another picture of it.

I've been making some efforts to put several cells together into one. So I took apart a 6 volt lantern battery, and built crystal cells out of the 4 zinc cylinders inside. Then I put it all back together, and wired them in series. At first it was putting out 4 volts at 3 milli-amps, then it suddenly died, like overnight, bam, after all that work...  I still believe this idea can work, I have some single cells I made from the interior cylinders from a lantern battery that are working just fine. So I must have messed something up with the cell formula for these 4. I've included some pics of the lantern battery and cells.

I've also included some pictures of a new heavy-duty rock crusher I built. Some of these crystals were starting to get the better of my wrist.  I just went to a home improvement store and messed around with the steel plumbing pipes until I got it to fit together like you see. I just pour the crystals or rocks in, and start pounding!

My latest cells are sitting in my room, and I have them shorting out, to try and make sure that they are going to last, and not die suddenly. I'm planning on building another flashlight with another D size cell I made using the formula below, this light will be like the one I've already built, except it will be smaller and more compact.

I finally got some new materials to build with too, Yay! Based on the performance of the cells that I have made so far, then my best and most reliable mixture is as follows.

Ingredients: Barium Titanate, Green Tourmaline, Iron Oxide, Titanium Dioxide, Calcium Chloride, Alum (Potassium Aluminum Sulphate), Sodium Silicate.

The average output I get with this mixture is about 1.2 volts 1.1 Milli-Amps, that is with a zinc negative and carbon positive. I know my ingredients list does not have the amounts, I'm going to buy a small scale that will let me measure out the precise weight of ingredients, but I haven't yet.

Now naturally the big question is: Does this mixture produce a genuine, never going to quit, crystal cell?

Honestly, I don't know. All I can say is, it has lasted under constant load for days on end, and can be left on a dead short, but then cycles right back to it's original voltage once the short is removed. No matter how I've poked and prodded it thus far, this mixture has given me no reason to believe as of yet, that it is not a true crystal cell. However, I think the only thing that can tell you for sure is time. Which is why I'm going to put this cell in a flashlight, which will keep it under constant load, forever. And I'll be able to monitor how it's doing over time simply by flipping the light on. Because if that joule thief ever quits recharging the super-cap, with me using the light regularly, it's not going to be long before the light simply won't turn on.

You can find some info on the cell that is powering my current flashlight, on page 59 of this thread. It was made on May 31, 2010. At first I had it running a joule thief, then I got the idea for this flashlight. So all together it has been actually powering something, day and night for roughly 5 months. So it looks pretty encouraging to me that this is the real deal, just like Ian's cell that has been running that watch.

Oh, and one little oddity I noticed, I don't know if it means anything but, I included a picture. When I add crushed emerald to the mixture above, it gets all frothy...and just kinda strange looking, I don't think it affected it's output any, but I just found this odd. 

Anyway, get well soon Ian, and take care everyone!

[mscoffman]

@mscoffman
I just noticed in an older post that you were first to recommend calcium chloride, that was a good call, it works quite nicely in crystal cells.

I did? - calcium chloride is a "salt" used for de-icing. Which is ok, as it probably
has a nice crystalline structure...but it is also readily soluble in water and humidity
is water, so it would make the cell hygroscopic...so one would want to make sure
that no water gets into the cell via that route. Don't forget the carbon rods are
porous too.

One way to keep that from happening is to use a plastic coating, immediately
after a bake-out. I always thought this one looked interesting:

http://www.plastidip.com/home_solutions/Plasti_Dip

One could pour a little in the top, let it harden and then dip the cell top and
carbon rod connection. This should keep the water out for sure.

---

Other than that, your voltages and currents are still high and sweet. Lets hope
they don't go away when atmosphere is excluded from the cell. Thank you for
your recipe information too.


:S:MarkSCoffman

[nul-points]

Hi everybody! Wowsers, what's all this activity about?
Last time I was here it was just me and one or two others...

hi Koen

good to see you back on the forum again

you were kind enough to comment on some of my work, a couple of years back, with my switched charge experiments

i've built on the previous work now with the addition of knowledge gained over the last couple of years on capacitor self-charge, galvanic action and thermal generation of electricity

i've also tried to incorporate some ideas suggested by your paper: 'The Secrets of Classical Electrodynamics'

specifically, i've attempted to create a section of convergent/divergent current in a pulsed-power circuit in conjunction with a stored charge reservoir (in my system, a battery)


i can see that there are some similarities between my recent experiments and the cells in this thread, although it's clear that i've followed a slightly more conventional dissimilar-metal, galvanic, route for producing voltage cells

it appears that after a few days 'burn-in' at ambient+10 degC my latest system is able not only to self-sustain lightly-loaded operation with a LED flasher circuit, but also to gradually increase the stored charge in the cell whilst on load

the on-load terminal voltage of the cell has gradually increased from an initial value of 1.6V, on Dec 8th, to its present value of 1.9V (whilst varying a few % with the daily ambient temperature cycle)

my interpretation is that the system is now converting thermal energy into electricity, in the voltage cell, if not also the main buffer capacitor

i'd be interested to hear your thoughts, if you have time to look at the experiment info at this thread:

  http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=10174.msg269055#new


many thanks - and all the best with the hush-hush stuff!
sandy