Hi All,
enclosed is a picture of the alufoilcell in a drinking glas.
There the inner walls are covered with alufoil, then comes the papertowel,
then the active charcoal powder and inside the active charcoal powder
is the stainless steel wool.
Over here on the pic you can see only the alufoil and the red-white papertowel.
The cell was connected to the 50 ohm load already now for 3 days and the voltage
is now down to 0.28 Volts.
If I am going to let it rest a few hours and add some fresh water, it will
again start at around 0.5 Volts with the 50 Ohm load.
Regards, Stefan.
hi stefan,
what is the reason that you have the stainless steel wool inside the charcoal? You would be better on to use only for contact a strip or thin rod of graphit, because you got aluminum foil as the negative and charcoal as the positiv if you put a second positiv with the SS wool inside the charcoal the output will be reduced.
SS wool and charcoal build a cell on its own and the next cell is SS wool and the aluminum foil, to check this just connect the meter leads on the aluminum foil and the charcoal and then on the ss wool and the charcoal.
the only what you need is a contact to the charcoal and there the best is a smal graphit plate strip or a thin graphite rod then you can let out the SS wool and will see more output.
greetings
walt
The steel wool is good....it has tremendous surface area vs. mass. But I agree with Walt. There are better materials. If you can get them spun like wool...
I saw online an electrolysis setup excerpt (The book was $2000 that I didn't have) that involved the cathode and anode being extremely porous, allowing for a surface area that far surpassed anything solid, and it increased efficiency by many orders of magnitude.
Hi Walter,
you are absolutely right,
but I wanted to make a cell, that everybody can make from things
he can buy at the supermarket !
Where can you buy graphite these days ?
It is pretty hard to come by and has its prize...
So stainless-steel dish-cleaner is easy to get in every bigger supermarket.
Okay, if you will find the older Zinc-Carbon batteries still anywhere ( not over here
in Germany anymore in supermarkets) you could buy one of these batteries and
remove the graphite rod out of it and use this, but as I said, it is hard to get for
the average person, who does not like to order special expensive graphite plates
from a special graphite company...
Regards, Stefan.
hallo stefan,
the easyest and cheapest contact graphit are the pencil lead from a carpenterpencil or afrom one of this thick pensils.The SS in connection with graphit powder gives a loss of around 0.2 V.
Dont take the graphit rod out of a zinc carbon battery because they are formulated to work with acidic paste and they are after my experience bad connector.
greetings
walt
Okay, good idea to use a pencil lead graphite. Did not think about that.
Will try it out and let you know.
Okay, this is a cheap sourc of graphite, I agree !
Regards, Stefan.
I tested to replace the stainless steel wool with a graphite lead pencil rod,
but it performed worse !
::)
It seems that the small graphite lead pencil rod has too low surface area, so
it can not collect all the electrons from the graphite powder.
When I replaced it, the voltage went down to 0.18 Volt in a few minutes at
the 50 ohm load, so that was not good.
With the stainless steel wool it stayed at least at around 0.3 Volt at least
after many hours of use.
Also with bigger graphite plates it was not very much more, so it seems
it really depends on the surface from graphite to the collector material
and as Stainless-Steel wool has lots of surface, it is better under load !
Also I saw, that the active charcoal powder also did "eat up" the
stainless steel wool a bit. I had some pieces of ss-wool broken apart
from the rest as it was the case of the itching away of the ss-contacts
at Walt?s batteries, when they were in contact with the graphite cylinders !
Also my ss-sink in the kitchen got itched up by the graphite powder !
So be careful when you handle graphite powder with stainless steel
and water, it seems the graphite oxidizes the stainless steel away in saltwater !
Regards, Stefan.
Stefan or Walt:
Does the Aluminum get eaten up as the battery is used?
Michael Couch
Hi michael,
stefan can probably answer this from his present test but I stopt experiementing with alufoil because of the consumption of the alufoil. Stefan's intend here was to show how easely with simple and cheap off the shelf (or the kitchen) materials to build a emergency power source where you could have a little lighting. maybe someday we would be happy to have this possibility.
greeting
walt
Hi Michael, yes, the ALufoil is consumed, but only very slowly.
For better power output it is indeed better to also use the stainless steel wool
from a dish-cleaner. This seems to have more power, than the graphite plate for the contact
to the active charcoal ! With a graphite plate to the active charcoal powder, my cell is now down
to 0.1 Volts after another 8 hours run. I will now change this again and use again the
Stainless-stell wool. Also the stainless steel wool seems to be eaten up after a while
by the active charcoal. But as these things are not too expensive to get in every
supermarket, this is indeed a good emergency battery which you can use to light
up white LEDs. ( with 3 or more cells in series or with only one cell and an oscillator circuit)
Regards, Stefan.
I revived now the alufoil cell somehow.
I did not change yet the alufoil nor any other thing.
I had only putting some graphite powder and some
active charcoal powder and some polymergel I still had
into the bowl and also did put a graphite plate into the center
of all the graphite-charcoal.
Then I dripped a lot of water in there, so it was very moisty and
let this then dry out for several days without connection to anything.
Now as the towel tissue has dried and the charcoal was almost dry
the cell had an open circuit voltage of 1.15 Volts again !
Then I connected a 100 Ohm load resistor and the voltage went down first to
0.55 Volt and then to 0.42 Volt where it stayed the whole night for 10 hours.
Now today the voltage is already since a few hours up to 0.45 Volt at the 100 Ohm
load.
So it seems also with the towel tissue alufoil-carbon graphite double layer
this cell can generate a good amout of electricity this way.
It really depends on the setup of these double layers and the
right "wetness".
Regards, Stefan.
Is this reactive to the sun in the same way as the AG cell? You also mentioned that there was a voltage increase in the morning. Is there any way you can correlate that to your local sun-rise? Also, can you monitor at sunset a decrease in the voltage? If so then there is some influence of the sun that the earth is shielding(at least partially). Mention this in the AG post if it proves significant.
Hmm, this evening-night ( without the sun)
the voltage is up to 0.46 Volts on the 100 Ohm load resistor!
Regards, Stefan.
Could this sunrise aspect be associated with the ionic charge in the atmosphere, like the Northern Lights?
Hi
this could be, I just dont know how could a test be set up to proof or dis-proof this theorie, what whould be a material to shield the cell in order to block any ionic influence. any sugestions?
the increase is independend from sunrise or sunset, in my case and many others it changes also over night.
greetings
walt
Hmm,
this cell now seems to be pretty neat !
Today now 16:13 pm the cell is at 0.48 Volts at the 100 Ohm load.
The load was on there all the time now.
Seems this cell is getting better and better.
When I have again some more free time in May,
I will build a really big alufoil cell like a capacitor and
see what this will deliver..
Regards, Stefan.
hi stefan,
you see like i sayd just let it run, the most fellows stopt the first time where they experienced this low voltage to until I told them not to do. but this effect is after my expierience just seen on cells which have my graphite- poly mix in there.
after my un-counted experiements the cells whould come back even under load up to around 80% of the startup voltage under load. there whould allways be a changing of the outpu voltage for about 50 to 100 mV, mostly the more the voltage degrease the higher they increase afterwards, strange but a fact.
with my own alloy is the increase of the voltage even higher, up to 30 % more.
Overall it is very fascinating and the running time under load exceed's that of any other battery many times.
the low working voltage can easely be compensated with series of more cells.
In regards to bigger cells it is my experience that out of economical reason it is much more practical to put a few smaler cells in parallel for higher current. I did put a very big cell together with more then 750 gr or 1 1/2 lb of my powder mix, three alloy plates in the size of 2 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches and five graphite plates of the same size the total size with the container was 6 x 8 x 6 inches and the result was only 750 mA short circuit thats what I get with a AG-c ell of the size of 1 1/4 x 3 3/4 inch and with the use of only 4 oz (120 gr) of the powdermix three of this cells paralell brings allready a little more then 2 amp short circuit.
greetings
walt
My alufoil cell is now up to 0.5 Volts !
Still since a few days on the 100 Ohm load with
no rest !
It is getting better and better !
Will report more in detail in Mid of May,
when I have again more free time.
Regards, Stefan.
hi stefan,
thats what I am talking about, that the cells wich have some of my power powder mix show all this increasevoltage under load condion's results what cells without dont do.
my test cell here did run yesterday the second time thru a absolut low voltage which was at 10pm by 0.539V, this morning after 8 hours it is allready back up to 0.549V. this makes the total running time under load with a 47 ohm resistor now to 647 hours.this is a equivalent of 7.8 Amp hours.
Did you take the time running from your alu foil cell and figure out how much you allready got?
greetings
walt
Hi,
my Alufoil cell is now up to 0.56 Volts now again at the 100
Ohm load. it now has risen since about 4 days all in all on the 100 Ohm
load contineously !
It seems the cell is formating itsself while it dries a bit...
Maybe there is a special crystalisation at the molecular level
when the cell dries and produces crystals surfaces which convert
heat to electrical energy somehow.
Regards, Stefan.
I can see where one might ge the other stuff, but the 'acitve charcoall powder' is something I only remeber seeing in flatullence pills and expensive filters. Is there a common, cheap source?
SOj
Quote from: hartiberlin on April 06, 2005, 02:39:24 AM
Hi All,
enclosed is a picture of the alufoilcell in a drinking glas.
There the inner walls are covered with alufoil, then comes the papertowel,
then the active charcoal powder and inside the active charcoal powder
is the stainless steel wool.
Over here on the pic you can see only the alufoil and the red-white papertowel.
The cell was connected to the 50 ohm load already now for 3 days and the voltage
is now down to 0.28 Volts.
If I am going to let it rest a few hours and add some fresh water, it will
again start at around 0.5 Volts with the 50 Ohm load.
Regards, Stefan.
Quote from: hartiberlin on April 30, 2005, 10:00:53 PM
Hi,
my Alufoil cell is now up to 0.56 Volts now again at the 100
Ohm load. it now has risen since about 4 days all in all on the 100 Ohm
load contineously !
It seems the cell is formating itsself while it dries a bit...
Maybe there is a special crystalisation at the molecular level
when the cell dries and produces crystals surfaces which convert
heat to electrical energy somehow.
Regards, Stefan.
hi stefan,
congratulation, it still will increase in voltage to about 0.6 to 0.7 Volt and probably will go down again and then will go up again, at least my AG-test cell is now at the third cycle after a total of over 800 hours under load. Try to cover the whole glass with a plastic bag, and squeeze the whole setup together maybe with a rubber band or so.
greetings
walt
Quote from: hartiberlin on April 30, 2005, 10:00:53 PM
Hi,
my Alufoil cell is now up to 0.56 Volts now again at the 100
Ohm load. it now has risen since about 4 days all in all on the 100 Ohm
load contineously !
It seems the cell is formating itsself while it dries a bit...
Maybe there is a special crystalisation at the molecular level
when the cell dries and produces crystals surfaces which convert
heat to electrical energy somehow.
Regards, Stefan.
Hi stefan ,
it is right that there is a crystaline surface developed due to the working under load, but it has nothing to do with converting heat, because all my tests in regards to heating my AG-cells shows the same result that there is no change if exposed to heat up to 75 degree C or cold down to freezer temperatur.
I believe it has also something to do with the salt involved what are if crystalized has crystals with a different structure ( seen under microscope, verry fine with a uniform form) and who brings different effects if you disolve this afterwards again. has more conductivity and higher TDS total dissolve solids) values
If you take a total dry cell you only need verry little destilled water to reaktivate them as long as the alufoile is still intact.
greetings
walt
Quote from: Sojourner on April 30, 2005, 10:48:53 PM
I can see where one might ge the other stuff, but the 'acitve charcoall powder' is something I only remeber seeing in flatullence pills and expensive filters. Is there a common, cheap source?
SOj
Quote from: hartiberlin on April 06, 2005, 02:39:24 AM
Hi All,
enclosed is a picture of the alufoilcell in a drinking glas.
There the inner walls are covered with alufoil, then comes the papertowel,
then the active charcoal powder and inside the active charcoal powder
is the stainless steel wool.
Over here on the pic you can see only the alufoil and the red-white papertowel.
The cell was connected to the 50 ohm load already now for 3 days and the voltage
is now down to 0.28 Volts.
If I am going to let it rest a few hours and add some fresh water, it will
again start at around 0.5 Volts with the 50 Ohm load.
Regards, Stefan.
hi SOj,
it depends where you live, here in the us you can have some charcoal granules from a waterfilter like the undersink filter unit's. but be carefull shake the cartridge and listen if it sounds like granules ( loose stuff) because there are solid versions out there with a kind of feltpaper who dont do anythings.
Still this granules are not as powerfull as mine power powder which is a special mixture but you can experiementing and see results.
greetings
walt
Soujourner,
go to a shop that sells aquariums filter stuff or go to Ebay and buy
active charcoal for filtering air or aquarium water.
The most active charcoal comes from coconut skin wood,
which was burned without oxygen and only charcoal carbon remains.
This charcoal carbon is not very conductive, so real graphite powder
is much better, cause it is much more conductive, but graphite powder
is also much more expensive and harder to get.
Graphit is a modification of carbon and can only be got by hard pressing
and heating for long time normal charcoal or coal.
Thus it is very energy demanding to produce graphite.
So it would be very good, if somebody could invent a method
to produce high conductive graphite from charcoal with
very low energy demand !
Maybe it could be invented a chemical reaction to produce
graphite powder from charcoal or coal. That would be very
efficient and nic to have cheap graphite powder, cause this will
very much lower the prize of these new watercells.
I think the formating of the crystals of the NaCl within the Carbon
molecule and the crystalisation on the metal surfaces helps to
generate the long living electricity from these cells.
I just added again water into the graphite and then the
crystallisation goes back into solution and the voltage droped from 0.5 Volt to
0.3 Volts on the 100 Ohm load.
So I will let this dry again and see, if I will get again 0.5 Volts,
when the crystalisation will occur again.
Regards, Stefan.
Today, the cell is up again to 0.4 Volts at the 100 Ohm load.
As I did not put the cell into any container,
the water can now evaporate slowly out of it via the paper towel
that hangs out a bit at the top and the crystals can form again.
Now I guess in a few days the cell will be again at least at 0.5 Volts
at the 100 Ohm load resistor.
It seems, that a load is beneficial for the crystallisation to take place.
Regards, Stefan.
Stefan,
I have some graphite powder that I am willing to sell for $1 USD per pound plus postage. I also have some catalytic graphite that I might sell for $5 per pound if people are interested. This material boasts cell power.
-Bruce P.
The alufoilcell is now again up to 0.43 Volts on the 100 ohm load
and still climbing.
Regards, Stefan.
I did a new experiment today, as the old alufoil cell
has dried out and also some of the alufoil has disintegrated...
So now I did a new test.
Have a look at this picture below.
I wanted to do first a basic test, to see, if the
output could be scaled up by using more output area
pickup graphite material.
I did brush a piece of alufoil, so the surface was rough.
Then I mixed 3 to 4 tablespoons of seasalt with 1 tablespoon
full of K2CO3 and made with a bit of water some kind of
mix paste from it.
Then I put this mix paste as a small layer onto the alufoil.
Then I poured graphite powder on it and finaly a graphite plate.
In the picture you can see, that I only had a pretty small graphite plate left.
The "canals" are from placing graphite rods first
onto the graphite powder surface to further test additional pickup
rods, but these don?t have much surface and some of the
salt-mixpaste and graphite did glue to them, when I removed it..
Anyway I got at the fresh start 1.42 Volts open circuit.
Here in the picture it is still shown at 1.36 Volts, after I made some
short circuit measurements.
The max shortcircuit current was about 25 mA going down then to about 12 mA
after about 45 seconds.
The output only depends on the available area of graphite plate contact and
graphite powder on the salt-mix.
If I would have had bigger graphite plates I could have got much more output power.
If the salt mix dries out the voltage will go down to around
0.7 to 0.9 Volts open circuit , but the current will drop to very low
values, like under 0.2 mA.
So this needs to stay in a certain wetness state to generate
enough output power, so 3 cells in series can drive a white LED quite nice
for pretty long time.
Regards, Stefan.
Today after around 14 hours atthe voltmeter the salt-mix
has already dried out a bit and the voltage is down to 1.1 Volt opencircuit.
I will let it dry out totally during the next days and see, where the voltage goes.
Regards, Stefan.
Now after about 28 hours later the saltmix has dried out and the
opencircuit voltage went down to 1.02 Volts.
Amazingly the voltage was 3 hours before already at 0.8 Volts...
Hmm, so now the last 3 hours it has risen now after midnight again 0.2 Volts
to now 1.02 Volts.
Hmm, strange, maybe we have today a high X-Ray output of the sun
as these cells tend to follow the X-Ray output of the sun.
Regards, Stefan.
Hi stefan,
this is the normale reaction because first of all the contact of the all the parts are to loose there should allways be a pressue to ensure a solid contact because due to the drieing process there is a shrinking and this gives a bad contact. especialy the graphit plates need a solid contact.
the other part is that in general the short circuit curent measuring should not last longer as max of 10 seconds followed by a break of at least one minute like allready described in the function of my AGcells this should be up to three times it creates a kind of formating , but if the short circuit last longer as 10 seconds there starts allready a disintegrading process which will stop the regenerating of the voltage and it takes a much longer time to start the regenerating/formating process again.
The concentration of K2Co3 should not be higher as 15% bei a specific gravity of 1.190 gr/ml because everythings above this level wil be contraceptive and shorten the live of the parts.
the proportion of the K2Co3 should be 7TS ( teaspoon) of seasalt to 1TS of Potash (K2Co3) diluted in destilled water and this mixed with the graphitpowder and then put on to the alu foile and then the graphite plate with at best a soldered on leadwire to ensure stable contact and the hole with a bit of pressure put together.
greetings
walt
Hi Walter,
Today the voltage is back to 1.18 Volts at this cell !
Now the slat and the graphite all has dried out and it is amazing,
that it gained so much voltage again.
Also the graphite plate seems to be pretty cold on the surface as if it
is real metal. Have to see if I can find my old digital temperature meter to see,
if it is colder than the surounding air.
Well, as this is now dried out completly I will now put a 100 Ohm load resistor on
it and report again.
I did it different than you Walter, cause I just put the saltmix first as a small
layer onto the alufoil with no graphite first in there.
Then when the saltmixwas plated as a small layer onto the alufoil,
I then poured in a second step only a small layer of graphite powder
onto the saltlayer, so the graphite is only at the top
and can not touch the alufoil !
This is important to the isolation of the alufoil versus the graphite.
I also just heated the whole cell from above with a 60 Watts
incandescent lamp for half a minute and I was able to raise the
voltage this way from 1.18 Volt to 1.36 Volts !
After taking the light away it has setteled down th 1.15 Volts.
As the voltameter has a innerresistance of 30 KOhm, I now wanted to
see what the inner resistance of the cell is and what current capabilities
it has .
I now connected a 100 Ohm resistor as a load and now in 2 minutes
the voltage on it went down to 0.05 Volts.
SO it seems the cell has a very high inner resistance and is not able
to drive a real load in this dried out state.
It still gives a pretty high voltage with aroun 1.15 Volts opencircuit
( at 30 Kohm load) but with a realworld load such as 100 Ohm
it is not able to drive a current and the voltage breaks in.
So now I will try to rewet it and see, what it wil bring then.
Regards, Stefan.
Ups, after half an hour the cell is now up again to 0.4 Volts at the 100 Ohm
load resistor ! This is at least 4 mA !
I have to see, how this goes on now.
as the saltmix and graphite is very dry now, I wonder how this works...
Hmm...
I wanted to se, how the cell would behave, when I would
heat it up, so if any water would have still remained in the slat crystalls
these would be gone after heating.
So I put this cell with the Alufoil onto the oven
and heated it over 100 degrees Celsius.
While heating it up I watched the open circuit
voltage.
The opencircuit voltage went up from 0.75 Volts at room
temperature to about 1.1 Volts at around 60 to 80 degrees
and then decrease again rapidly until it was near zero volts.
Then I shut off the heatingplate and took the cell away from it.
Now with a 100 Ohm load the cell really showed 0 Volts.
So I seemed to have killed the cell for its function.
Maybe I destroyed the surface layer between the alufoil and
its oxids and chlorids and carbonats at the surface layer between
the aluminium and the salts.
Or also the other transistion layer between the saltmix and
graphite was killed now.
I have now put again the voltmeter onto the cell
without a load resistor and will see, if the cell
will regain voltage, when it has cooled down.
Regards, Stefan.
Now after the cell has cooled down the open
circuit voltage has gone back up to 0.65 Volts.
But when I apply a 100 Ohm load resistor the
cell only has 0.02 Volts output at this resistor.
So I will let it run now at the load resistor until tomorrow
morning and see, if it will regain some strength again.
Regards, Stefan.
I applied some water today at the surface and the voltage at the 100 Ohm load resistor went back up
to 0.55 Volts !
So now we know, that the saltmix needs to have some wetness to get the right output.
Just very dry does not work.
So the main power output source of this cell is still a galvanic action.
Then I scrapped all the saltmix and graphite powder off from the alufoil and
mixed it together, so it got a black paste and applied this mixed up NaCl , K2CO3 and
graphite powder mix to a new piece of alufoil.
I again put it there as a small layer and then applied ontop of it the graphite
plate for a current pickup electrode plate.
The open circuit voltage was 1.1 Volts and with a 100 Ohm Load
resistor the voltage went down to 0.52 Volts.
Now after about 6 hours the voltage at the 100 Ohm load resistor is down
to 0.3 Volts and the mix has already a bit dried at the surface, but is still
wet a bit deeper.
So I will let this run again during the night and see how it will be tommorow.
Regards, Stefan.
Hi Stefan,
Quote from: hartiberlin on June 03, 2005, 06:19:44 PM
Hmm, strange, maybe we have today a high X-Ray output of the sun
as these cells tend to follow the X-Ray output of the sun.
Your experiments with this cell are interesting, but I highly doubt that it is affected
by solar x-rays. The reason is that x-rays can't penetrate the atmosphere! From your
description of the cell, my bet is that changes in humidity cause the effects you're
seeing.
Take care.