Isolating electrodes

[Room3327]

Farrah,
  You may be absolutly right, I'm not saying your not.  But current can flow through a capacitor, easily, depends on frequency put into it. If you recall the moniker ICE, in capacitors current leads voltage so before the voltage can increase, current is already flowing.  Also the field intensity between capacitor plates is very sensitive to the spacing between them.  I believe it is, decrease the distance by half and increase the field intensity by 4 times. Glass is way to thick for what I am talking and maybe I'm talking out the bottom end. Who Knows? Do you have all the answers?

[Farrah Day]

Hi Room

Don't forget that a capacitor only passes AC - a true capacitor is open circuit to dc or dc pulses.

Yes your right in that the capacitance is inversely proportional to the distance between the plates - the closer the plates, the greater the capacitance. But of course, this is all assuming that capacitance plays a part in a Meyer-type wfc... and I'm not entirely convinced it does.  And you can't really have it both ways, either your capacitor is a true capacitor and no dc current flows, or it's not a capacitor and current flows through it.

I'm now thinking along the lines of the the electronics being the most important part of the Meyer WFC, but not in the way most people see it. I think the answer may well lie in Stifflers SEC. But again, this is only my opinion.

It's all well and good talking about capacitors and HV, but how do people explain the electrochemistry that is going on - what are the reactions that give rise to the evolution of gases?  Any such idea must surely be supported at least by a proposed reaction at atomic/molecular level. I've stated my reasons as to why - in my mind - HV can not evolve gas, but I've had no one propose their own theory as to why it could.

People seem to find it all too easy to say things like, 'oh yes, we just put high voltage across electrodes and we get oxygen and hydrogen', as if that answers everything and requires no further discussion. To be meaningful, any such comment has to be backed by an appropriate balanced equation.

PS... I love it when you call me Honey!

[Room3327]

Farrah Honey,
  Like I've said before, we have some brilliant theories here, including yours, my thoughts on it are probably too simplistic, but in self defense, my background is electronics not chemistry so I am lost there.  I am looking at it as brute force using voltage instead of current.  Current can tear water molecules apart as you describe in your theory.  I'm thinking if I can apply a voltage bias across the capacitive cell which would line the water molecules up and stretch them out between the plates and then hit them with a very high voltage to give them that last tug to snap the bonds and pull them apart.  I am talking hundreds of volts bias before hitting it with a HV pulse. And also narrow spacing between plates to keep field intensity high. Probably to simple for what is going on in a cell but it's my thought on it.

[Farrah Day]

Room lover

I have no problem with voltage pulses - high or other - pulling the water molecule apart as such, it's just that I assume this to give us H+ and OH-.  I think that voltage pulses will cause ionisation due to electric field fluctuations, and so give us H+ and OH-, it's the what happens next in the voltage only scenario...

How do you get from H+ & OH- ions to 2h2 and O2 without the exchange of charges?

I believe that it is the electric field fluctuations caused by ion current flow in standard electrolysis that causes ionisation of the water molecule, but here we have electrodes for the H+ and OH- to exchange charges and so become O and H. With the voltage only set up we don't... see the problem?

The devil is in the detail... or in this case lack of detail.