Originally Posted by
SmartScarecrow
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 ...