Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[jeanna]

Common cheap ,easy to get hold of, chemicals I am using at the moment are:

Borax  Na2B4o7(10H2O)
Caustic Soda   NaOH
Aluminium Sulphate   ( Alum)
Calcium Sulphate  (gypsom)

And of course the silicates of your choice.
.  Thats why I'm not ruling out Sodium Bicarbonte as a replacement.

Thats about as technical as I'll go for the moment. I am happy to share my results and formulas in the hope that other experimenters will do the same. Perhaps someone will come up with something I may have missed and find a better way.

The experiments continue.

I hope I haven't bored you with all of this.

All the best   Ian

Ian,
I am a biologist, not a chemist. I have been following many of the same subjects as those in this thread. I really appreciate that you will share your experiments with everyone. It is the cross-linking of ideas that will produce the results. It also has the effect of encouraging someone who has hit the wall of his own ideas. thanks. And NO I am NOT bored!

I gave the link before to geopolymers.org and as I mentioned I have been mixing the chemicals that I can find that might give me the reaction. All the reactions described in Prof. Davidovits' theory happen at warm air temperatures. He usually mentions 20 C.

He maintains the first chemical to use to alkalinize the mixture is sodium carbonate not sodium hydroxide. In the states it is called washing soda. (It  can be made from sodium bicarbonate by heating etc) Arm & Hammer makes it as a laundry booster.

It is too cold for me to continue with these experiments before spring. So, I won't e playing along til then. I thought you could use this info. Sodium carbonate.

jeanna

[hansvonlieven]

G'day Jeanna and all,

The link given in your earlier post for the Geopolymer Institute does not work.

Here is the correct link:  http://www.geopolymer.org/

Cheers

Hans von Lieven

[Koen1]

Hi Guys, it's my first time here. I've been following this thread for quite awhile with great interest.
I have been experimenting with crystal cells for many years and had some success,( if you can call 20mV a success).
Like most of you here I have studied the same videos on John Hutchison and with respect to the one where you see him crushing
rocks and mixing them with white powder this was a mere demo of the proceedure.

Obviously he was showing us the crude basic steps not the exact method. Those rocks needed a lot more pounding.
Also I noticed a long time ago that there was no way in the world was he going to achieve a temperature above 250 - 300 degrees C
with his open air electric stove. I've tried it. If you build a kiln around it with fire bricks to prevent the surrounding air from cooling it,
you can get the temp up to about 365 0C. Then the thing is glowing red. Also you see him place a plastic lid on his "shake and bake" container. In practice you would not do this, it would be the first thing to melt.

Ian, thanks for joining the thread. Clearly you know what you're talking about. It's good to have you here

Indeed, the procedure Hutchison showed in that "invent this!" video was meant more as a demonstration of the steps involved than it was meant as an actual
"repicate my movements exactly" construction course. This is also why he doesn't mention exactly which "exotic silicates" and "special ingredients" he is mixing in, nor does he mention which metals he is using; he's not telling us exactly what to mix and how, he's just pointing us in a direction worth studying.

Also, you are right that his electric heater does not provide 250 degree plus temperatures, if only because his little "tin" can would probably melt in the process.
However, he never mentions that he would be heating it to such high temperatures either. He does not claim to be melting the silicates, which would need much higher temperatures. He claims he mixes several substances including various silicates, with some "special chemicals", and "bakes" them into a solid.
To me, that says he is talking about inducing a chemical reaction between the components of the mix.
And it is well possible to induce an endothermic chemical reaction with temperatures below 250 degrees celcius, even using the crude electric hotplate...

As for the voltage he uses and where to apply them , again a crude demo. Any voltage above 40V and you get a tingling in your fingers. For the size of container he was showing us (2.5 - 3 cm diameter) you would need a polarizing voltage of at least 200VDC.
you do not hold that with your fingers.

Heh... 200V static is no problemo. DC at respectable amperages, at 200V, probably a very bad idea.
But you must have done the fairly standard electrophysics experiment in high school (or whatever) where you get to touch a van de Graaf generator terminal, your hair stands on end completely, and you point your finger at the nearest student, to have a big spark jump and shock the student? Most good mansized vdG generators have very high voltages, easily 200V and upwards... Yet it's absolutely no problem to have that high charge accumulate on your body, or to have it conduct directly to the ground through you. As long as it's mostly just high voltage and little to no amperage at all, not much happens...
Now remember that hutchison has been experimenting with high voltages for decades and has multiple vdG generators and other types of hV generators in his appartment, I'd say it is well possible he is really touching the terminals...
That said, I do believe he is acting for the video, and is not in fact jolting the 'cell' with hV in the video. 

Also he mentioned the minerals had to be treated in some way. Does he mean treated before they go into the mix or as part of the
baking process? I am certain that the white powder you see him use in the mix is a combination of two or more ingredients.
These chemicals also need to have melting points below 300 0C.

I still think it's not the melting point that is important, but the temperature at which the chemicals start to react.
I find it interesting that you are certain of a combination of chemicals. Is this your own study and reasoning that led you to the chemicals you mention below, or did you find any mention of him using these?

Common cheap ,easy to get hold of, chemicals I am using at the moment are:

Borax  Na2B4o7(10H2O)
Caustic Soda   NaOH
Aluminium Sulphate   ( Alum)
Calcium Sulphate  (gypsom)

And of course the silicates of your choice.

Borax reduces the melting point of many substances and is used as a flux and produces a hard glassy lump when cooled.
Ideal for holding micro crystals in place when polarized. It is not a good conductor of electricty so you'll have to throw in a carrier
substance, one that does have free electrons available, so they will move under the influence of the polarized crystal charges.

The problem I am having trouble with is the caustic soda. It is needed to perform a chemical reaction with the quartz.
When SiO2 is reacted with caustic soda it produces Sodium Silicate. Na4O4Si ( theres those silicates again).
If reacted for a short while ie minutes, each quartz crystal gets a coating of sodium silicate. Sodium is a very good conductor of electricity.
So far I haven't been able to devise a way to neutralise the caustic action after baking. It creates a false voltage reading due to
electrolytice action and corrodes the electrodes.  Thats why I'm not ruling out Sodium Bicarbonte as a replacement.

Good to see you have worked on this and also realised the possibility of false voltage readings due to corrosion reactions.
I like your approach. Probably because it is not far from the approach I have been using. Maybe not exactly the same address, but along the same road nevertheless.
A problem you probably encounter is the occurrance of water in the reaction product, which allows for a certain level of ongoing reaction between components, and which can easily give false voltage readings.
If I am right in suspecting that you are in fact quite a bit further along in your research than you care to divulge here at this time, you will probably need no less than a word to figure out the relations to your experiments, and related crystalline structures. And so, I will not bore you with too much blabla, and simply say this to see what your reaction may be: Tourmaline.

Thats about as technical as I'll go for the moment. I am happy to share my results and formulas in the hope that other experimenters will do the same. Perhaps someone will come up with something I may have missed and find a better way.

The experiments continue.

I hope I haven't bored you with all of this.

Certainly not. This has been one of the most interesting posts on the subject I have read in a while.

Kind regards,
Koen

[ian middleton]

G'day Koen and all,
Thankyou for your kind welcome.

It would appear that we are following very similar lines of research. (Tourmaline)
So without further addo I'll give you the results of a benchmark test I did on January 5th.
The idea of doing this particular test was to give me a starting point for a new mix, whether it worked or not.
The following details are from my notes.

The ingredients:

2.75g              crushed clinker ( the same as John Hutchison uses)
11.35 g           crushed calcite
5.00g              crushed tourmaline (pink)
5.2g                silicon carbide  (220 grade grit, as used in stone polishing)
37.3g              sodium carbonate   ( thanks Jeanna )

All the above quantities were arbitary, stuff I had to hand at the time.

Using 2 stainless steel electrodes, the dry mix registered no electrical activity.

Added 20ml of water to make a paste and to evenly mix the ingredients. At this point there was a voltage of 120mV and the
reaction became endothermic ( got hot).

Heated mix on Low heat for 20 minutes .
45 minutes polarizing with 12.5 V while cooling.

Initial terminal voltage, after removal of the polarizing voltage, was 0.53 V
This voltage reduced to 0.125V and thats where it has stayed. The short circuit current was a pityful 2uA.

However if the container is warmed slightly, the voltage begins to rise. I believe this is because the tourmaline in the mix
exhibits its well known pyrovoltaic effect.
As I said I am using this test as a benchmark and at this time I do not consider it a success.
The next step is to find out which of the ingredients reacted with the Sodium Carbonate to produce the heat.

I've started to use the silcon carbide to try and increase the dielectric strength of the mix, similar to an electret. More testing needs to be done in this area.

At some point in the process the mix has to become fluid or fluid enough to allow crystal mobility for alighnment. In this test I used water. T T Townsend used wax. Camphor (moth balls) may give a similar result, who knows.

Any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreicated.
Thats it for now.
Kind regards  Ian

[jeanna]

The ingredients:

2.75g              crushed clinker ( the same as John Hutchison uses)
11.35 g           crushed calcite
5.00g              crushed tourmaline (pink)
5.2g                silicon carbide  (220 grade grit, as used in stone polishing)
37.3g              sodium carbonate   ( thanks Jeanna )

The next step is to find out which of the ingredients reacted with the Sodium Carbonate to produce the heat.

I've started to use the silcon carbide to try and increase the dielectric strength of the mix, similar to an electret. More testing needs to be done in this area.

At some point in the process the mix has to become fluid or fluid enough to allow crystal mobility for alighnment

Any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreicated.
Thats it for now.
Kind regards  Ian

Hi Ian,
As I was hunting down information on sodium silicate last summer, I came across some information which may give you some leads. (It had nothing to do with electrical responses.)
One is that the extremely basic solution formed by the calcium carbonate in water will dissolve the silicates and they will precipitate when the pH of the solution gets too low (toward acid). This very high pH also dissolves other crystals that contain Si in their structure..

When looking for heat, I would start with the clinker because when you mix portland cement, which is burnt calcite with clinker, with just water the compound heats up. If it is fresh it can even boil!  Then the curing process continues to give off heat in a more gentle fashion.

Since acid will dissolve the calcite, I would add that later AFTER the Si based compounds have dissolved.

You have given me a good idea. I remember watching J Hutchison at his stove. Maybe applying heat is just a way to evaporate the liquid off the newly forming crystals.

Thank you,
jeanna