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Thread: Reducing Foam

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Posts
    126
    I use spa defoamer and did not see a reduction of HHO gas being made. If you mix a gallon of electrolyte add 1/4 teaspoon of the defoamer and shake it up. Works great...

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Fort Worth, TX
    Posts
    510
    What is the effect on the plates themself? How about the internal components in the engine? I don't like having KOH fumes getting in there, let alone something made for a spa, getting in my engine...

    The question was, has anyone done the electrified screen method? Window screen may be too small in hole size to help this as alot of liquid will collect on the top of it. As gas passes through the screening, it will only produce more foam on the TOP of the screen, making the thing useless. The holes would need to be around 1/8" in diameter, MAYBE 1/16".

  3. #13
    I dont know I will ask around to a few I know that had this problem. I will then report back on my blog about it which can be found in my sig. As soon as I have a legitimate answer I will be posting it no more then 3 days from now should work.

  4. #14
    drumacc Guest

    Tried the spa defoamer finally.

    DuPont Spa Defoamer. Bought it at Lowes. It did work it seemed at first, but there was still foam in the cell itself. I did not, however, have a problem with it building up in the reserve.

    I also did not notice a drop in production.

    I would like to know if we are inadvertently creating some nasty by-product, such as when guys used salt as a seemingly safe electrolyte, and found out later that they were making chlorine gas...

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    Paso Robles, CA
    Posts
    202
    I have posted links to my reducing foam video several times so I won't bother again. Like I say in the video, the spa de-foamer will kill the foam at the reservoir just as you noticed, but not at the cell itself. What I have found is that when I put together a new cell and run it for a while I get a LOT of foam. I will run it for weeks and then drain it, flush it out with more distilled water, clean the scum ring in the reservoir that has built up, and then flush the reservoir with distilled water. After that I refill everything including a squirt or two of spa de-foamer and I get very little foam after that. Someone pointed out to me that new plates, gaskets, end plates, reservoirs, and even hoses have oil and other impurities on them and that is the cause of a lot of the foam. Over-driving the cell can also add to it, but a clean system should help reduce it.

    I would recommend if not a tear down and cleaning of all plates and gaskets, then at least a good flushing. If you do tear it down use rubber gloves and try not to get any dirt or other contaminates in the cell when re-building. I just did the flushing trick two days ago on a 8 inch 37 plate dry cell that I had running for about a month. There was a TON of foam at just 20 amps. After flushing it out real good I got no foam at all at 50 amps!

    Give it a try!

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