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Bassman
12-27-2008, 10:16 PM
I was testing my Dry Cell today and I was checking the temperature with a Heat Sensing Gun and a thought came to me that if I had made a 6" X 6" cell with extra plate length on the sides, like an 8" X 6" with the gasket still being a 6" X 6", that it would leave an inch of plates on each side like cooling fins.

Has anyone tried that?

Carolinablue
12-27-2008, 10:22 PM
Sounds good.....:)

coffeeachiever
12-28-2008, 12:54 AM
That's good thinking.

Dave Nowlin
12-28-2008, 01:49 AM
If you bring the plastic end plates out far enough to protect the edges of the plates from making contact and shorting out, then the cooling effect may be lost due to poor air circulation. If you don't protect the edge of the plates and something shorts across them you will be a very unhappy camper.

Dave Nowlin

BoyntonStu
12-28-2008, 08:23 AM
I was testing my Dry Cell today and I was checking the temperature with a Heat Sensing Gun and a thought came to me that if I had made a 6" X 6" cell with extra plate length on the sides, like an 8" X 6" with the gasket still being a 6" X 6", that it would leave an inch of plates on each side like cooling fins.

Has anyone tried that?

Amoeba Cell Air Cooled Parallel 6 Cells

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9x_AFXu9q9k&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9x_AFXu9q9k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x_AFXu9q9k

BoyntonStu

Bassman
12-28-2008, 09:45 AM
If you bring the plastic end plates out far enough to protect the edges of the plates from making contact and shorting out, then the cooling effect may be lost due to poor air circulation. If you don't protect the edge of the plates and something shorts across them you will be a very unhappy camper.

Dave Nowlin

Not necessarily, Air flows through the fin slots, not across. But that doesn't mean that the plastic end plate couldn't extend past the plates and have a slot cut in it or holes drilled through it in the extended area. Probably, some kind of mesh grill could be added around it for further protection.

The plates would have to have a hole cut through them, large enough for the compression bolts with an insulator around them to pass through. There could also be a deflector added that would make the air flow up through the fin slots.

If you needed more cooling, just extended it wider.

My next idea was to cool the liquid or solution. A piece of stainless tubing with fins attached behind the grill of the vehicle with the output of the cell connected to it by hose and then a hose connected to the other end of the tubing and connecting to your storage tank.

Gforce
01-06-2009, 01:21 AM
The one thing I would be concerned about is starting to get a voltage drop across the plate. I believe the reason we are limited to 6" x 6" cells is because going beyond that the voltage would drop and so would production. You may be able to minimize this by only growing the plate in one axis.

The other thing is excess heat is waste heat. If you are generating too much waste heat then you are wasting energy. The thing is to optimize the cell so heat rise is a minimum.

coffeeachiever
01-06-2009, 09:32 AM
I did not know we were limited to 6x6. This is the first time I have read that.... Am I missing something?

I thought most used 6x6 for it's smaller size (easier to mount). My cell is 8x8 because I have a ton of room and the surface area is nearly 2x that of a 6x6 (64 sqin compared to 36 sqin per plate)

Ive never heard of a size restriction on the plates either. EBN sells an 8x8. Semi trucks have been known to use some pretty big plates.
If one were to use plates so large that voltage drop became an issue, wouldn't you just decrease the number of neutrals?

H2OPWR
01-06-2009, 12:03 PM
Your voltage drop between the plates should not be affected by your plate size at all. I have tested from 4X4 up to now 6X8 plates. The voltage drop is a constant formula of source voltage devided by plate gap. What drops is the amp's per square inch of plate surface. I am still not sold on the supposed fact that there is an optimum number of amps to run per square inch. The only difference that I have noticed is the cell temp. Seems to me that the lower the amps per square inch the lower the heat gain. Maybe that is just because of the extra electrolite solution that the extra space holds. I am not sure but I would like someone to explain this that has done some good testing on the subject. I feel that the extra HHO production gained with raising the amps per square inch comes from the electrolite and HHO heating up and expanding causing higher measured HHO but no more real gas. If I am off base would someone explain how this really works.

SmartScarecrow
01-22-2009, 03:54 PM
one thing to keep in mind regarding heat is that we are not really performing electrolysis here, we are doing electroplating ... the release of hydrogen and oxygen is a by product of the electroplating process ... heat is generated by the metallic salts, either potassium or sodium (depending on KOH or NaOH) being plated to the positive plate as part of the reaction ...

once a sufficient layer of potassium or sodium is deposited on the surface of the positive plate it will get a golden patina color to it ... at this point the plate is considered to be "conditioned" ...

heat is a byproduct of the chemical reaction caused by KOH being broken up and then recombined ... because of this, heat is pretty much unavoidable ... get used to it, you will generate some heat ...

heat can be your friend ... tests would indicate that the efficiency of the production of hydroxy increases significantly as temperature increases ... tests under pressures up to 15 psi and temperatures up to 250F have been conducted and it looks like some modest gains in performance might be possible ...

BUT, KOH boils at about 140F and many of the materials we use for gaskets and hoses start to break down at temperatures about 150F ... so in most cases, its best to do something to control the temperature of you system and try to keep it under 130F or so ...

In a dry cell, we use a fairly large volume of fluid in a combination reservoir/bubbler ... if configured and mounted properly, convection flow will move fluid through the device and provide adequate cooling to keep the temperature in check ... in some designs, a pump and radiator is employed force fluid through the device and dump excess heat ... but in most cases, this extreme should not be required ...

bottom line, the biggest cause of excessive heat buildup is over voltage ... you really need to design your system in such a way that your per plate gap voltage is as close to 2v as possible ... if you drop under 2v per plate gap, your efficiency will drop like a stone ... a little over 2v per plate gap will slowly drop in efficiency ... so in general, its better to use 2.4v than 1.8v ... but as you start getting close to 3v per plate gap, you will be making more steam and excess heat than hydroxy gas ...

another big cause of over heating is trying to push too many watts at a device that doesn't have enough surface area to support it ... in general, you will want to have 4 square inches of surface area for every watt of energy you apply ... so if you have a device with 1000 square inches, you really want to keep your applied wattage to no more than 250 watts ... in a 12v system, this would be about 20 amps ... if you over amp a device with too little surface area, the result will be heat, steam and foaming ...

anyway, this is a very long post that I suspect very few will find interesting so I will get off my soap box now ... hope this helps someone move forward ...

H2OPWR
01-22-2009, 04:13 PM
another big cause of over heating is trying to push too many watts at a device that doesn't have enough surface area to support it ... in general, you will want to have 4 square inches of surface area for every watt of energy you apply ... so if you have a device with 1000 square inches, you really want to keep your applied wattage to no more than 250 watts ... in a 12v system, this would be about 20 amps ... if you over amp a device with too little surface area, the result will be heat, steam and foaming ...

anyway, this is a very long post that I suspect very few will find interesting so I will get off my soap box now ... hope this helps someone move forward ...

Thanks SmartScarecrow, I have been looking for the correct information as to the max allowable current.

Painless
01-22-2009, 04:37 PM
SmartScarecrow,

To bring back an old question and argument / discussion:

Total surface area, do you count BOTH sides of the plates or just ONE side? In other words, how much area of steel you have or how much area is producing HHO?

Russ.

SmartScarecrow
01-22-2009, 05:02 PM
SmartScarecrow,

To bring back an old question and argument / discussion:

Total surface area, do you count BOTH sides of the plates or just ONE side? In other words, how much area of steel you have or how much area is producing HHO?

Russ.

yes ... if it is a plate surface that is exposed to the reaction, tally it in your total surface area ... a bi-polar (neutral) plate has two surfaces, both count ...

cully
01-22-2009, 06:00 PM
this is a very good bit of information and i think it explains a lot to me why my smaller cells foam and my larger cell works so well


in general, you will want to have 4 square inches of surface area for every watt of energy you apply ... so if you have a device with 1000 square inches, you really want to keep your applied wattage to no more than 250 watts ... in a 12v system, this would be about 20 amps ... if you over amp a device with too little surface area, the result will be heat, steam and foaming

harabsnyder
02-28-2009, 09:29 PM
After reading this as well as realizing the only location I may mount on my accord would result in plates no taller than 5 inches, would it be fine to go with 5x9 with the intent of not really going over 15amps? it gives a little more surface area than 6x6 (1035 vs 828) count neutrals as 2x surface area. Or does that push onto to much SA?

I do not know what scarecrow meant by keeping the between plat voltage at 2v or slightly higher, and am at a bigger blank on how to figure that out.

harabsnyder
02-28-2009, 09:46 PM
http://www.hhoforums.com/showthread.php?t=2468

refering to my previous questions of the plate gap, is a 7 plate, 6 gap segment - NNNNN +going to be at 2v per plate gap at 12v total? and is that why the 5n's is the 'majic number'

thanks

SmartScarecrow
02-28-2009, 10:19 PM
After reading this as well as realizing the only location I may mount on my accord would result in plates no taller than 5 inches, would it be fine to go with 5x9 with the intent of not really going over 15amps? it gives a little more surface area than 6x6 (1035 vs 828) count neutrals as 2x surface area. Or does that push onto to much SA?

I do not know what scarecrow meant by keeping the between plat voltage at 2v or slightly higher, and am at a bigger blank on how to figure that out.

your voltage per plate gap measured between any two adjacent plates, should be as close to 2v as possible ... in most cases, a 5N, or a setup with 5 neutral plates, will get you very close to this mark ...

as far a doing a short fat one, instead of a tall skinny one, I can see where you might have issues with the fluid staying level in the device ... typically in the rather harsh environment of an automobile, a tall skinny setup works best ... as the fluid jiggles around in the thing, there is little change in actual surface contact ... but that may not be the case with one that sits short and fat ... I can see where rather dramatic changes in fluid contact with the steel might be possible ... could even close off you gas outlet and cause fluid to be pumped out of your device ...

on the bench, a short fat one works every bit as good as a tall skinny one ... but I think that the short fat profile might need some tricks work well under the hood of a car ...

Gary Diamond
02-28-2009, 11:14 PM
your voltage per plate gap measured between any two adjacent plates, should be as close to 2v as possible ... in most cases, a 5N, or a setup with 5 neutral plates, will get you very close to this mark ...

as far a doing a short fat one, instead of a tall skinny one, I can see where you might have issues with the fluid staying level in the device ... typically in the rather harsh environment of an automobile, a tall skinny setup works best ... as the fluid jiggles around in the thing, there is little change in actual surface contact ... but that may not be the case with one that sits short and fat ... I can see where rather dramatic changes in fluid contact with the steel might be possible ... could even close off you gas outlet and cause fluid to be pumped out of your device ...

on the bench, a short fat one works every bit as good as a tall skinny one ... but I think that the short fat profile might need some tricks work well under the hood of a car ...

Good point never thought of that

bigjim56
03-01-2009, 04:29 PM
Hey SSC, can you weigh in on my setup here...

I measured the voltage from the alternator and w/the best gauge I could find, I got 13.96 VDC. I am using the pan liner (0.040) for gasket material versus the .060 neoprene. I realize I'm right on the edge w/the voltage, but with the thinner gasket material doesn't that allow it to run cooler, or do I have it backwards. I remember reading a thread where it was good to run thinner gaskets, but I don't remember the specifics.

I'm ready to build using the -NNNNN+NNNNN- plate configuration that daddymikey reccommended in an earlier post, but with the voltage close to 14VDC I was thinking maybe I need an additional N plate to allow for a cooler running cell. I need to stay away from the higher heat operation due to the pan liner gasket material.

With the 5N configuration that amounts to 2.33 volts/plate, while the 6N configuration drops that to 1.99 volts/plate. Unless I'm missing something, it would be better to go w/the 5N. I remember reading that once the volts drop below 2.0, the production drops off considerably, I don't want to jepordize that. I can offset the heat somewhat with a bigger reservoir and the cell placement.

I am thankful for the 5/16 supply and effluent holes now (H2OPWR plates), I've read the other thread where the closer gap results in cell starvation and cavitation of the electrolite, resulting in drawdown of the electrolite level within the cell. I'm battling that by maintaining the larger supply and effluent sizes of hoses and fittings throughout the cycle. I believe most use 1/4" for those holes. I hope this solves that supply problem.

Sure would appreciate any input SSC, H2OPWR said you have some experience w/a setup such as this.

Thanks,

bigjim56

SmartScarecrow
03-01-2009, 04:37 PM
Hey SSC, can you weigh in on my setup here...

I measured the voltage from the alternator and w/the best gauge I could find, I got 13.96 VDC. I am using the pan liner (0.040) for gasket material versus the .060 neoprene. I realize I'm right on the edge w/the voltage, but with the thinner gasket material doesn't that allow it to run cooler, or do I have it backwards. I remember reading a thread where it was good to run thinner gaskets, but I don't remember the specifics.

I'm ready to build using the -NNNNN+NNNNN- plate configuration that daddymikey reccommended in an earlier post, but with the voltage close to 14VDC I was thinking maybe I need an additional N plate to allow for a cooler running cell. I need to stay away from the higher heat operation due to the pan liner gasket material.

With the 5N configuration that amounts to 2.33 volts/plate, while the 6N configuration drops that to 1.99 volts/plate. Unless I'm missing something, it would be better to go w/the 5N. I remember reading that once the volts drop below 2.0, the production drops off considerably, I don't want to jepordize that. I can offset the heat somewhat with a bigger reservoir and the cell placement.

I am thankful for the 5/16 supply and effluent holes now (H2OPWR plates), I've read the other thread where the closer gap results in cell starvation and cavitation of the electrolite, resulting in drawdown of the electrolite level within the cell. I'm battling that by maintaining the larger supply and effluent sizes of hoses and fittings throughout the cycle. I believe most use 1/4" for those holes. I hope this solves that supply problem.

Sure would appreciate any input SSC, H2OPWR said you have some experience w/a setup such as this.

Thanks,

bigjim56


I have been arguing this with Smack for some time now ... he is getting really good results with a 6N configuration ... but most of the EBN guys who have tried this have indicated poor results ... but one the guys who did sort of like Larry did and installed a separate high performance alternator and secondary battery was able to get good results with the 6N ... so I really dont know how to reply ...

best I can suggest is that the 5N is known to work well and is the safe, sane way to go ... everyone working with a 5N seems to be pleased with the performance ... the 6N is sort of cutting edge ... it may be worth trying if you have the resources ... but be prepared to back off to the 5N if you dont see what you are looking for ...

on a smallish device like you are talking with only 13 plates, that really tight plate gap you are using should be ok ... but I suspect that if you were to up the number of segments, maybe go to the 5N3 instead of your 5N2, you might have to increase your gap to maintain fluid level in your device ... if your plate gap goes dry, you aint gonna make no gas ...

SmartScarecrow
03-01-2009, 05:18 PM
5N...6N.... I'm going with 11n or 12n!! Oh but I am running at 24v :D

yeah, I know what you mean ... I am sitting here looking at mine and trying to count the N's ... think I lost count at 72 or so ... LOL ...

bigjim56
03-01-2009, 08:36 PM
Thanks for the reply SSC, I will go with the 5N, but if it does overheat and need to rebuilt, the 6th N will go in.

bigjim56

hydrowood
03-04-2009, 09:43 AM
check out this tubular drycell design http://www.h2extreme.comvery efficent cell produces a lot of gas with verry little current.

woodsmithca
03-22-2009, 02:57 PM
bottom line, the biggest cause of excessive heat buildup is over voltage ... you really need to design your system in such a way that your per plate gap voltage is as close to 2v as possible ... if you drop under 2v per plate gap, your efficiency will drop like a stone ... a little over 2v per plate gap will slowly drop in efficiency ... so in general, its better to use 2.4v than 1.8v ... but as you start getting close to 3v per plate gap, you will be making more steam and excess heat than hydroxy gas ...

another big cause of over heating is trying to push too many watts at a device that doesn't have enough surface area to support it ... in general, you will want to have 4 square inches of surface area for every watt of energy you apply ... so if you have a device with 1000 square inches, you really want to keep your applied wattage to no more than 250 watts ... in a 12v system, this would be about 20 amps ... if you over amp a device with too little surface area, the result will be heat, steam and foaming ...

anyway, this is a very long post that I suspect very few will find interesting so I will get off my soap box now ... hope this helps someone move forward ...

To test the voltage drop between plates: I would, using my voltmeter, put red on a positive terminal and then the black on the first neutral, record, then the second neutral, record, and so on until i reach the negative plate and there should only be a 2v difference at each plate.
Also do i fill my cell with only water or water and kaoh, and do i do it on a hot or cold cell.
My cell looks as follows:
34 plates in total
+NNN-NNN+NNN-NNN+ [center block] -NNN+NNN-NNN+NNN-

BoyntonStu
03-22-2009, 03:47 PM
Thanks for the reply SSC, I will go with the 5N, but if it does overheat and need to rebuilt, the 6th N will go in.

bigjim56


Build with 6 E plates and short out one if necessary.

BoyntonStu