Quote from: hartiberlin on December 12, 2010, 07:58:44 PM
Hi Groundloop,
I just also tested it with a 2700 uF 35 Volt electrolytic cap.
The cap charges up to around 20 to 50 millivolts, depending
on if I touch it or not.
Then when shorted only very quickly, it recharges fast.
But when you short it out for longer time, it need also much longer to recharge again.
So the trick is to extract only short portion of it , so it can  recover faster.

Also in my case only the case and the negative pole of the capacitor are the real
contacts that have the effect.

I just also made another test
like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPIHaXey1DQ

I tested this just with my 2700 uF 35 Volts electrolytic cap with my 3 Watts 12 Volts LED lamp.
I fed this from a 10 Volts DC Nokia mobile Phone charger. The Captret drops the voltage from 10 Volts to around 8 Volts at the LED and the LED lamp is much darker then. You can also connect the plus of the power supply also directly to the plus of the LED lamp and not connect it to the cap plus pole->same effect.
Then the cap works as an additional load resistor..

BUT: the Wattmeter went this way from 3Watts input and cos phi 0.48 to
0 Watts and cos phi=1 !!!
So I don´t draw any power from the grid and still get light output....

But the light output is much lower this way.
I will try it also with a 47 uF cap as Ibpointless2 did and report back..
Many thanks.

Regards, Stefan.

Hi,

Yes i know about the self charging effect, thats why i call it the captret (cap meaning capacitor and tret meaning electret). I also made a video to show this effect of quick pulses to see if i could drain the captret. i was able to flash the LED for a long time, so long that i got tired of it. heres the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqC8nAjoAVc

My captret hooked up to a 1.5 watt 120 volt LED bulb can run on 0.00 watts after 15 minutes of running. Using a 1uF 400 volt capacitor. Also whats neat is when you disconnect the power the captret will continue to light the LEDs for a couple seconds longer. Considering its only a 1uF capacitor thats amazing!


And its common that you can do your setup of using the case and the negative because every capacitors different. But i do find it funny because i use to think the case was grounded to the negative but my ideas have change and the case is merely another lead just like the + and -. The captret makes a single capacitor into 3 capacitors. + and -, + and case, - and case, all can have there own voltages on them. All are affected by each other in a good way and a bad way. Shorting the + and case will drain the + and the - but it will reach a voltage and start to climb back up. As to why it self charges? could be how its related to the electret?

Those short sharp pulse that you talk about are very important. Acutely short sharp high voltage pulses are the best. Thats why it works so well with the joule thief and pulse motors. My goal is to get a captret to run a pulse motor, because i know how to even further the efficiency of the captret but a pulse motor is needed.

@ibpointless2
Yes, I just hooked up 2 x 2700 uF 35 Volts caps in parallel and the light
now is a bit brighter, but the digital Wattmeter still displays 0 Watts and 0 amps and Cos Phi= 1.

So with still bigger caps, so more uF  in parallel the light would probably still be brighter.

I wonder if I am somehow destroying the electrolytic caps ?
Maybe I am galvanically destroying the electrolyte solution inside ?
But the caps don´t get hot at all... they are still cold..

The caps just are connected only as a preload resistor this way in series with the LED lamp.
From their case to the 2 shorted pins of the cap, there is a positive voltage of 2.12 Volts at this 2 x 2700uf=5400 uF parallel cap.

So does this voltage destroy the electrolytic solution internally ?

I just measured the current at the lamp, it is only 3.2 milliAmps and the Voltage at the lamp is 8.12 Volts DC.

So the input power into the lamp is only about 26 MilliWatts now on the lamp..

So this is probably why the digital Wattmeter does not display any input power.
It is just below its error range...

Best regards, Stefan.

@All,

I finally got around and soldered my first (of 10) CapTret boards.
The board has 100 pcs. 220uF 35V electrolytic capacitors that
has both + and - shorted out as one connection, and a new wire
added to the aluminum can with conductive glue and solder
as the second connection. Then all the modified capacitors are
connect in series.

The series string of capacitors self charge up to approx. 1,8 Volt.
When I load the board with my volt meter then the voltage
drops fast to some millivolt. So the current capability is very low.

I will do some tests on this single board to see if I can tap some
useful energy out of the board before I continue solder the other
boards. It will take some time because it is a slow and boring
process to solder and modify all those capacitors.

Groundloop.

@all

First off thanks for all the nice work , everyone.


I was thinking since the power from the battery is not really leaving it , maybe a charged cap could replace the battery ? Sorry if irrelevant .

I will need to look into making my dual jt circuit work on it one captret at each end , maybe there is a way to bounce the voltage up faster .

Again my apologies for not having time to go trough everything .

   

Hi Groundloop,
well done.

By the way, what kind of conductive glue are you using ?

Is this some kind of silver paint ?

Please post the brand name and how the conductive glue works.
Is there some graphite in it or is it silver based ?

Many thanks.

Regards, Stefan.