After some runs on my dry cell. I found the carbon ash released from using carbon electrodes increases not only the conductivity of the cells electrolyte, but is heavier then water letting it settle out.
I guess my question now is, I want to be rid of the potassium carbonate, and only use the carbon particles, but how to extract it? The best i have come up with so far, is to collect it out, let it settle, and repeat several times till i have the least amount of potash liquid, and the most of the carbon residue.
Then i would place this in a clean cell without a carbon electrode.
The particulates seemed to make the amps fly up to 30 to 40 now matter how much the potash mixture was diluted. So that tells me, the carbon particles are what is increasing the reactivity, not the potash added. So I would like to get them separated, and test that out.
Any thoughts? I thought of allowing the water to evaporate, or boil it down, but I fear I would be left with the potash still in there as well.
To me, the logical thing to do would be to find some finely powdered carbon from another source. That way you could at least prove your theory. Possible sources in order of preference.
Find someone who operates a coal or wood stove and scrape some soot from the chimney.
Obtain some charcoal sticks from an art shop, and pulverise them with a hammer.
Pulverised barbeque charcoal
Finely powdered coal.
"Lamp Black " from an art shop .
Scrapings from a vehicle exhaust tailpipe.
Just a few ideas . :)
Quote from: ydeardorff on April 22, 2012, 03:21:01 PM
After some runs on my dry cell. I found the carbon ash released from using carbon electrodes increases not only the conductivity of the cells electrolyte, but is heavier then water letting it settle out.
I guess my question now is, I want to be rid of the potassium carbonate, and only use the carbon particles, but how to extract it? The best i have come up with so far, is to collect it out, let it settle, and repeat several times till i have the least amount of potash liquid, and the most of the carbon residue.
Then i would place this in a clean cell without a carbon electrode.
The particulates seemed to make the amps fly up to 30 to 40 now matter how much the potash mixture was diluted. So that tells me, the carbon particles are what is increasing the reactivity, not the potash added. So I would like to get them separated, and test that out.
Any thoughts? I thought of allowing the water to evaporate, or boil it down, but I fear I would be left with the potash still in there as well.
Hmm,
how did you get the carbon particles into your HHO drycell ?
What was your electrolyte composed of ?
Many thanks.
I set up a cell with a large block of EDM carbon graphite in it as the central cathode. The production was stunning.
However as the cell warmed up, i expected to see the amps climb which is customarily the case. Once I hit about 35 amps, I poured in some fresh, distilled water to drop the conductivity down till I could run at a stable 15 to 20 amps.
Each time I did, the amps would drop, only to climb right back up again. I did this till the electrolyte was halved twice in strength from its original strength of 3 teaspoons per gallon of potash.
What i concluded was the carbon was coming off from the EDM electrode, and adding more conductive particles to the electrolyte, in essence making the electrolyte stronger, but as the amps climb, the carbon erodes faster.
So in this case the water turns black, but thats a good thing, till it runs out of control. Once I can remake my cell housings so they seal better, and I have a PWM to control the amperage Ill revisit this test.
I was running 3VDC per plate gap, and had nothing but large bubbles, no foaming at all. It was producing bubbles, and flow comparable to what I have seen in some 7 plate gap designs. My plate gaps are over 1/4" wide.
http://youtu.be/VhEbAtdzn8k
The key here is, my educated guess here is the carbon particles are making a conductive daisy chain across from one electrode to the other. This may reduce or completely eliminate the use of chemicals.
I studied elements and chemical reactions for 3 years before I came up with my cell configuration. The results have been stunning.
After exceeding 35 amps for two hours the erosion on the EDM carbon was about .010" If I can get the amps under control that should slow that process down alot, and keep the amperage under control as the carbon electrode wears down.
Im going to sacrifice one of my edm carbon electrodes and grind it up to make the dust I need. Then mix into normal distilled water to see if it produces gas. If my theory is sound it should, and well!