Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[PaulLowrance]

Awesome research Ian!!!!  Those look so professionally done as well. Hopefully early 2010 I'd like to start making some. Here's the testing method I'd like to use,


1. Dead short all of the ones that produce at least one steady nano amp. That should be all of them. 

2. From time to time periodically test the current & open voltage. After removing the dead short quickly measure the current to see what current it settles at. Then measuring the voltage, open-circuit obviously, and wait till the voltage settles.

3. Keep measuring the voltage & current periodically, maybe a few times per month.

4. About twice per year repeat step 2, except give the battery about 10 days to recover (open-circuit). After the tenth day, measure the voltage, then measure the current by shorting it across the current meter, and wait till current settles.

5. Continue periodic measurements until the voltage & current from step 4 measurements reach their lowest stabilized level.


Step 4 about is taken from years of diode & piezo experiments. As a reference, my AA Alkaline battery that had been shorted for about ~~ a year produced a few *nano* amps. It's been a long time since it was last tested, and it's still shorted. So it would be interesting to see how much it's decreased. If the crystal / baked batteries can settle at even a micro amp, then that's amazing!


Regards,
Paul

[ian middleton]

G'day all,

@Paul, yes I use very similar testing methods. What I do is simply find the "ground state" of each cell. That is put a low resistance load (2k) across the cell and see how long for it to maintain a constant current across that load. As you know this may take months.
However, once the ground state has been established, all other cells can be measured against this benchmark.
where would I get one of your peizos from?



Ian

[PaulLowrance]

Hi Ian,

I've used several types of piezos. The first one was a Radio Shack element, part number 273-073. I was not the first to test them. A EE, by profession, I'm working with accidentally discovered piezos produce DC current & voltage. He had already verified my claim that shielded diodes produce DC current & voltage, and so he came up with a new test to see the diode charge a piezo and measure the piezos change in height as the charge increased. Although he's not actually the first to discover piezos producing current. Who was it, Thompson Brown, or someone???

Another piezo, part number PKM13EPYH4000-A0, has the record so far of producing 5.5 volts. The current is low though. Starts out at a few micro amps and settles down at ~ 10 pA. I did a long term piezo test where it was inside a thick metal chassis, and that was inside ~ 2 foot diameter of thermal insulation. That piezo produced a consistent 10pA for ~ a month. It was still producing 10pA, but I had to stop the experiment.

I've tested diodes & piezos for just everything I can think of, from testing for low levels of radioactivity to various types of solar activity to atmospheric pressure changes. So far no correlation.

The bad thing about piezos is their high DC resistance. The good part of piezos is that there is no electrochemical reactions and according to conventional physics a shielded piezo should not produce *DC* current & voltage. So the piezo gives us the hope & proof. The final goal is to just get something that produces a good amount of current in a normal size package.

Please keep up the good work!

Paul

[Pirate88179]

Ian:

Fantastic work man.  Your method looks to be to be totally scalable too.  What if your disk was the size of a Frisbee for example?  Or manhole cover?

This is great work!

Bill

[Pirate88179]

MK1 just posted this link over in the JT topic:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/07/how_to_make_piezo_crystal.html

You guys may know all about this but 26 volts from Rochelle salt (pizo) held under pressure from a spring clamp?  This looks very interesting.  Thought you might like to see it if you hadn't.

Bill