Q-Hack's Test

[Q-Hack!]

Well, 14 unconnected plates is too many. Just tried it out and got absolutely nada in the way of production.

Going to remove 3 plates and try again... This will give me a plate gap voltage of 1.08 volts on my test bench (13.2 volts).

On the plus side, it looks like the Gorilla glue is holding up for now.

I am a little concerned about the particulate in the electrolyte. My holes are only 1/8 inch in the Gorilla glue (inside of a 1/4 inch hole) I suspect that any final design will have to account for this.

[SmartScarecrow]

Well, 14 unconnected plates is too many. Just tried it out and got absolutely nada in the way of production.

Going to remove 3 plates and try again... This will give me a plate gap voltage of 1.08 volts on my test bench (13.2 volts).

On the plus side, it looks like the Gorilla glue is holding up for now.

I am a little concerned about the particulate in the electrolyte. My holes are only 1/8 inch in the Gorilla glue (inside of a 1/4 inch hole) I suspect that any final design will have to account for this.

I have had trouble with so many adhesives I dont think I could list them all ... about the only thing that so far has not let me down is Marine Goop but I try to use that only very sparingly ... I have had epoxies that swore they could stop a speeding bullet turn to mush ... glues that swore they were more powerful than a locomotive crystallize and contaminate my soup ... so I can understand your frustration with the Gorilla glue ... but please keep trying different stuff ... you might get lucky and find one that holds up ...

but on the volts per plate gap, I am a bit surprised at your position ... so many before you have been down that path and passed on what they learned ... with stainless steel plates, you will end up at 2v per gap ... with nickel plates, you can get away with about 1.8v ... with copper plates you can get away with about 1.6v ... but only the stainless steel will hold up for more than 30 minutes so you will in fact end up at about 2v ...

there is certainly no harm in just proving to yourself hands on what others have found ... I do it all the time ... its all about replication and validation ... but this one was pretty much beaten to death about 20 years ago and has been documented by a lot of fellows a lot smarter than me ... did I miss something and am not understanding what it is you want to prove ?

EDIT: sorry, but on the Gorilla glue front I am confused ... you have particulate material which is probably glue residue, but you indicate that the stuff looks like its holding up !?!? please clarify ...

[Q-Hack!]

The particulate mater I am referring to is the electrolyte itself. I have noticed that it is such a problem that water flow becomes a problem. I dropped the number of plates down to two, just a positive and the negative plate and could not get any production. I initially thought that the hole in my Gorilla glue was just too small to allow electrolyte flow. So, I removed the Gorilla glue completely for a 7 plate test. Again I had absolutely no electrolyte flowing (or HHO production either). I did notice that my heat was building up fast with the reduced number of plates, but that heat may have been due to the particulate shorting out the plates. As you can see in pic "AgNO3_plates_9.jpg" that there is a lot of gunk, which I believe to be powdered silver. It is so think on the plate that it is actually blocking the flow with my 40 mil spacing between the plates. In pic "AgNO3_plates_10.jpg" you can see where the current was highest on the lower portion of the plate. This is where the gunk had settled. This stuff is messy; every thing it touches turns a dark grey.

When I first tried AgNO3 I was using a modified Smack's booster design. It had a wide spacing between the plates and was in an open bath. As a result I didn't see the problems I am seeing with the thinly spaced dry cell design. I suspect that even if I double or triple the spacing between the plates, the fact that it is a dry cell design means that eventually it will clog up with this gunk and short out the plates. At this point I think I will discontinue any testing with AgNO3. I know it works in an open bath, and I may want to do more testing with my VSPB later on (its still mounted in my Saturn VUE for now). I am going to clean up my test plates and re-glue/re-drill the 7 that I undid and see how well the Gorilla glue holds up under NaOH next.

BTW, my VSPB is built with the 3M Marine goop. I have been on the quest for the perfect substance to stick to stainless steel for almost a year now.

[Q-Hack!]

but on the volts per plate gap, I am a bit surprised at your position ... so many before you have been down that path and passed on what they learned ... with stainless steel plates, you will end up at 2v per gap ... with nickel plates, you can get away with about 1.8v ... with copper plates you can get away with about 1.6v ... but only the stainless steel will hold up for more than 30 minutes so you will in fact end up at about 2v ...

I don't think I explained why I believe the way I do very well... When I first tested AgNO3 in my modified Smacks booster... maybe I should explain how that was built.

It started out as a +|||||-|||||+|||||- setup for use with NaOH. I used this setup because it kept the heat down (gap voltage was 2.16v on my bench). I then cleaned every thing very well and used AgNO3. I had good production, but my heat went through the roof and fast. I then reconfigured the plate arrangement to +||||||||||||- or about 1 volt per gap and tried again. Production looked about the same, but it kept the heat down. I did do a LPM test, but I don't remember the exact numbers. I do remember that it wasn't any improvement over NaOH. Hence the reason I didn't pursue it further back then.

[SmartScarecrow]

I don't think I explained why I believe the way I do very well... When I first tested AgNO3 in my modified Smacks booster... maybe I should explain how that was built.

It started out as a +|||||-|||||+|||||- setup for use with NaOH. I used this setup because it kept the heat down (gap voltage was 2.16v on my bench). I then cleaned every thing very well and used AgNO3. I had good production, but my heat went through the roof and fast. I then reconfigured the plate arrangement to +||||||||||||- or about 1 volt per gap and tried again. Production looked about the same, but it kept the heat down. I did do a LPM test, but I don't remember the exact numbers. I do remember that it wasn't any improvement over NaOH. Hence the reason I didn't pursue it further back then.

I see your logic now ... but silver nitrite is only slightly more conductive and is less reactive than KOH or NaOH so I would expect the voltage required to be very similar to get any reaction ... I am rather surprised you managed to get a reaction at all with such a low voltage per plate gap ... so I may have to sleep on that one ... what you did should not have worked ... its a puzzle ...

if you can get your hands on some cesium hydroxide, that is quite a bit more reactive than either KOH or NaOH and would probably react well with voltages down in the 1.3 or 1.6 range ... but getting hand on it is tough and its expensive ...

I see now why your are getting particulate material ...

if you are interested in examining silver compounds as an electrolyte, I had pretty good results with colloidal silver ... a solution of this can be made in distilled water using a fairly high voltage electroplating technique ... instructions are readily available on the internet ... the silver ends up plated to the positive plate and the solution wont last very long, but it works pretty well for the short term ...

[Q-Hack!]

I see your logic now ... but silver nitrite is only slightly more conductive and is less reactive than KOH or NaOH so I would expect the voltage required to be very similar to get any reaction ... I am rather surprised you managed to get a reaction at all with such a low voltage per plate gap ... so I may have to sleep on that one ... what you did should not have worked ... its a puzzle ...

I suspect that Nicolas Leblanc, back in the early 1900s, didn't have stainless steel to experiment with. When he came up with the list of voltages required for minimum continuous hydrogen production, it was probably with copper plates or something with similar conductive value. Either way, one would expect to see a linear scale with the various electrolytes given the same test setup. That is to say that if using copper plates we need .7 volts for AgNO3 and 1.69 volts for NaOH. Then I would need a slightly higher voltages for both if using stainless steel.

if you can get your hands on some cesium hydroxide, that is quite a bit more reactive than either KOH or NaOH and would probably react well with voltages down in the 1.3 or 1.6 range ... but getting hand on it is tough and its expensive ...

I see now why your are getting particulate material ...

if you are interested in examining silver compounds as an electrolyte, I had pretty good results with colloidal silver ... a solution of this can be made in distilled water using a fairly high voltage electroplating technique ... instructions are readily available on the internet ... the silver ends up plated to the positive plate and the solution wont last very long, but it works pretty well for the short term ...

I may at some point get into other electrolytes. Something that I will have to keep in mind, we need electrolytes that don't produce sludge. Could be a tall order.

[SmartScarecrow]

I have a working theory about what most of us are doing in these things that I will run past you ... actually, its not "my theory", its one that a number of fellows I know have worked out and I have bought into it ... this may or may not be the "facts" but the numbers we are seeing seem to support it ...

so here goes ...

We are NOT directly splitting water with electrolysis in the manner described by Faraday. What we are doing is spitting KOH (in my case anyway; works same with NaOH) ...

this is what happens ...

at a point somewhere between the plates is a sweet spot ... at this sweet spot, the electrical potential, zero point energy, strong nuclear force, magnetic levitation or what the heck it is that yanks a molecule apart is strong enough that is pulls apart the components of the KOH molecule ... KOH is not bound nearly as strong as water and is in fact much easier to seperate ...

the K and H components each have a slight positive charge to them and start migrating toward the negative plate ... the O component has a slight negative charge to it and starts migrating toward the positive plate ...

now as it happens, the K component is highly reactive and really dont like to travel alone ... with so much water in the mix, the K is bound to nudge close enough along the way to come in contact with a water molecule ... because of its reactive nature, the K is strong enough to grab hold of a water molecule and bind with it ... in the process, a small amount of heat is released along with a spare H that used to be part of the water ... this is because the reactivity of the K is such that it is happy and stabilized once it acquires a bond with a single H and a single O ...

so now that the K has managed to eject an H from the water molecule it has decided to react with, what are we left with ? well, from the original KOH molecule we split, we immediately got 1 H and 1 O ... then from the chemical reaction of the K bonding with a water molecule we got another H, a little bit of heat and a KOH molecule to start the process all over again with ...

now again, this is the working theory ... numbers are being developed right now that seem to support this scenario ... it explains a lot of the anomalies that many of us have noted over the years and there are many of us that think this will probably turn out to be what is actually happening in our devices ...

how is this relevant to what you are working on ?

well, it gives you clues as to what to look for in a potential electrolyte ... one of the reasons that KOH and NaOH seem to work so well and appear to be much more efficient than some other materials tried might be due to the OH components, and the metallic components affinity for reaction with water ...

something to think about ...

[Q-Hack!]

It seems a reasonable theory. I am not much of a chemist, so for me it is all just a best guess. I will say this though, from every body I have seen or read about trying different substances. It appears that hydroxides perform better than non hydroxides. Which would support your (their) theory.

I think there was somebody on this forum that wanted to try Calcium hydroxide. Not sure if he ever did try it... at least I never heard of the outcome from it. I do remember that we speculated on weather it would leave calcium deposits on the plates, much like hard water leaves calcium on a teapot. But it would be interesting to know the results.

[daddymikey1975]

I have a working theory about what most of us are doing in these things that I will run past you ... actually, its not "my theory", its one that a number of fellows I know have worked out and I have bought into it ... this may or may not be the "facts" but the numbers we are seeing seem to support it ...

so here goes ...

We are NOT directly splitting water with electrolysis in the manner described by Faraday. What we are doing is spitting KOH (in my case anyway; works same with NaOH) ...

this is what happens ...

at a point somewhere between the plates is a sweet spot ... at this sweet spot, the electrical potential, zero point energy, strong nuclear force, magnetic levitation or what the heck it is that yanks a molecule apart is strong enough that is pulls apart the components of the KOH molecule ... KOH is not bound nearly as strong as water and is in fact much easier to seperate ...

the K and H components each have a slight positive charge to them and start migrating toward the negative plate ... the O component has a slight negative charge to it and starts migrating toward the positive plate ...

now as it happens, the K component is highly reactive and really dont like to travel alone ... with so much water in the mix, the K is bound to nudge close enough along the way to come in contact with a water molecule ... because of its reactive nature, the K is strong enough to grab hold of a water molecule and bind with it ... in the process, a small amount of heat is released along with a spare H that used to be part of the water ... this is because the reactivity of the K is such that it is happy and stabilized once it acquires a bond with a single H and a single O ...

so now that the K has managed to eject an H from the water molecule it has decided to react with, what are we left with ? well, from the original KOH molecule we split, we immediately got 1 H and 1 O ... then from the chemical reaction of the K bonding with a water molecule we got another H, a little bit of heat and a KOH molecule to start the process all over again with ...

now again, this is the working theory ... numbers are being developed right now that seem to support this scenario ... it explains a lot of the anomalies that many of us have noted over the years and there are many of us that think this will probably turn out to be what is actually happening in our devices ...

how is this relevant to what you are working on ?

well, it gives you clues as to what to look for in a potential electrolyte ... one of the reasons that KOH and NaOH seem to work so well and appear to be much more efficient than some other materials tried might be due to the OH components, and the metallic components affinity for reaction with water ...

something to think about ...

while I do understand that this is only theory at this point, this is the BEST explanation of what's happening that i've run across.

it brings me to another point that i thought of while reading this.

what we're doing wouldn't exactly be 'water electrolysis' then would it?? HAHA (that's meant as a joke)

plasma spark could electrolyze water and split it couldn't it ?? (assuming the information that's available is accurate)

this seems the most promising way to effectively 'split' water molecules. I thought I ran across someone on one of the forums where I play, that was working on such an animal.

I think Shane (here) was working on the vexus circuit to do just this... i'm interested to see how this works out.. wouldn't have to use an electrolyte, should be just distilled water.

just my thoughts while reading.

mike

[Q-Hack!]

while I do understand that this is only theory at this point, this is the BEST explanation of what's happening that i've run across.

it brings me to another point that i thought of while reading this.

what we're doing wouldn't exactly be 'water electrolysis' then would it?? HAHA (that's meant as a joke)

plasma spark could electrolyze water and split it couldn't it ?? (assuming the information that's available is accurate)

this seems the most promising way to effectively 'split' water molecules. I thought I ran across someone on one of the forums where I play, that was working on such an animal.

I think Shane (here) was working on the vexus circuit to do just this... i'm interested to see how this works out.. wouldn't have to use an electrolyte, should be just distilled water.

just my thoughts while reading.

mike

Once you get into plasma, you enter into a whole new realm. Plasma being the third state of mater puts you into quantum theory. Tis a bit more than just breaking apart molecules.