16 Wall Plate Dry Cell Fail Very little Production

[(D3F0)]

Last weekend I went to Lowe's and bought everything I needed to make a dry cell. I bought 18 plates half of them were from Home depot. The quality of these plates was really bad, they were very magnetic and corroded surprisingly fast. Then I bought a bunch of stainless steel hardware, Pvc pipe with caps, barbs, tubeing, and 60 ml shower pan liner. I went to work cutting the plates making neutrals, Positives and negatives. After that i cut out the gaskets and i thought i had it looking pretty good.

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I spent all of Sunday cutting all my gaskets and plates. I even took the plates and I even sanded where surface that is going to be in contact with the solution. I put together the actual cell by cutting the Lexan i put together a neat little cell. The plates have 1/16 spacing between them.



That is a picture of an 8 plate cell i tried half the plates to try a different wiring solution. I changed my wiring to +NN--NN+



No matter what I tried this plate did not produce any actual hydrogen at all I tried it with a bunch of different power supplies, I used baking soda as my electrolyte. Can someone help me out or something this ended up failing hard haha and that was after trying a bunch of different things. Just in case your wondering I used about 1/3 of a tablespoon to 5 cups of water in my test at 18v 3.5 amps, 17v 2.5 amps, 12 volts at 1.5 amps and 12v with im not sure how amps at least 20 though. So let me know what you think i did wrong this is my first attempt at this stuff.

[koya1893]

I must admit, I have not used baking soda as the electrolyte so I might not give you a good example. First I noticed the width of your gasket covers more surface than what is exposed for production, even still you should produce something.

So, try configuring your cell this way -NNNNN+, then find some NaOH at lowes, it's called drain cleaner or 100% drain cleaner. use 10 table spoon per 1 qt. of distilled water. As I said I cannot offer you mixture number for the baking soda because I have not used it. For experiment purpose, you can find the readily mixed liquid drain solution and mix that with 1/2 gl. of water. But you need to use NaOH or KOH to get better result and use the configuration above.

Also, the equalizing holes are far too big and need to be alternating not direct to each. Even the way you have it configured now you should produce, try mixing your solution stronger with what you have. BE CARFUL with Baking soda it produces some toxic fumes, so do it in an well ventelated area OUTSIDE.

[(D3F0)]

Thanks for the quick response I am going to retry my configuration using what you said right now and get the drain cleaner and supplies later today. The holes are drilled really wrong idk what i was thinking haha but check out this funny stupid wet cell i made in 5 mins you will laugh and I still do looking at it.







It is made out of Hard drive plates its 3+ and 2- its funny because I have been playing around with the couple things i made and this things goes crazy in the water. Also is drain cleaner less toxic in a fuel cell?

[BioFarmer93]

D3F0-
It's late and I'm tired so this'll be short. Low production because the unit is tiny (wall plates) and the gaskets are relatively HUGE, you have only two neutral plates per stack an you've wasted a power plate in the middle there by adding (for whatever reason) a redundant one of the same polarity. If you want to work with wall plates, then buy at least seven more and a HDPE cutting board from Wal-Mart to make your end plates from. Don't ever use baking soda again, Google KOH and buy some. Use stainless steel hardware. Make your gaskets only half as wide as those you showed us. Build your unit in this configuration... +NNNNNN-NNNNNN+ That is the minimum, as small as wall plates are, you could repeat this configuration at least 4 more times before you got into any serious amp draw. G'nite.

[(D3F0)]

Thanks a lot For the reponse im going to try today to get a bunch of supplies I was not able to get any suppllies yesterday. Is NaOH just as good as KOH because thats what im going to try today. Im going to try 22 or 19 Plates but i can tell if my shower Pan Liner is 40ml or 60ml I bet its 40 ml and it must be shorting out when I compress it to seal. Also should I do +NNNNNN-NNNNNN+NNNNNN- or should I try -NNNNN+NNNNN-NNNNN+. Im going to try and get around 2liters a minture and I will be cutting my gaskets to half the size also so the will be about 1/4 inch in width all around. Thanks for all the help.

[lhazleton]

Considering the material you're using for plates, you might as well just go with 5 bi-polar plates per stack. As far as putting out 2LPM, it ain't gonna happen.
Just use NaOH for now as it's much cheaper than KOH.
Once you get some experience under your belt, you'll see what I mean.

[(D3F0)]

Yea ill just use -NNNNN+ I found out my shower pan liner is only .040 inches thick so i have to double stack which means all day cutting up some more gaskets. I went to Walmart, Lows, Radioshack, and Home depot today and got all the stuff I need. Do you think this Drain opener that says it has Potassium hydroxide in it is an OK electrolyte, here is a picture of the bottle





and yes I am Black haha but this should work right?

[BioFarmer93]

D3F0-
Dude,you are not black. You made me go back and look at the photo again 'cause I totally missed it. We have some Nigerian friends from church that make you look like a fish belly! Anyway, making HHO is NOT an exclusive white boy club..
That drain opener IS KOH- you did good. Don't worry about only .040" thick gaskets, your plates will not short out when tightened, hell, I still use .040" and my plates are a lot bigger with no shorting, so it's all good.
It doesn't matter if you go +NNNNNN-NNNNNN+ OR -NNNNNN+NNNNNN- ..the electrons don't care. I know LHazleton said to use 5 neutral plates, but with the square inches of active plate area available in your reactor being on the small side, keep some extras handy, so you can insert 1 more in each stack if she starts running away heat-wise. Oh yeah, you're going to need to get yourself a tap of the proper thread size for the fittings that you go with, because these things will leak if given half a chance, so good fitting to end-plate sealing is important... Well, is it done yet??? PICTURES!!! We love pictures!

[(D3F0)]

haha yea Im not dark at all but im almost 100% hatian but back to hydrogen =) Im glad I got the right drain cleaner but It sucks that I just spent 2 hours cutting 46 gaskets when I did not even need that many. Is .080 inch gap too big because id like to try it if Its the same thing and not feel like I wasted all that work. =/ I Cut the gaskets to make them 1/4 inch wide to give me a little more surface area here is what they look like.



I like the new gaskets a lot better they make more sence to me. I have 10 more Neutral plates waiting to be flattened out and cut like the rest here is a picture to show about everything im going to use to make my tiny 21 wall plate gen.



That is almost 120 dollars of supplies, the cutting board from Walmart is beastly thanks for the tip Biofarmer. Obviously it will seal much better than that thin lexan. In the photo
notice the old computer power supply that im going to convert into a pinch power suppy it is only 250 watts but it can put out 12V at 16 amps which is good enough for now. Thanks for the help eveyone ill be posting more of my progress tommorrow.

[koya1893]

D3FO,
I want to thank you for you post with some thoughts behind all your questions and drawing in some of the "olde" guys back into this forum to give you some of the answers to your questions. I noticed the 2" PVC pipe, which I assume you will use for your bubbler and the slip on expansion plug. I used them for awhile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qS2JShKkW4
Checkout this link and see what I mean about making better use of that plug. these are my contribution to the community.