dry cell crapped out!!! why?!?

[aceras624]

so Ive been running my prototype HHO dry cell for about a week now and all of a sudden the amperage it pulls is like HALF and its getting HOT(not the electrolyte, the plates themselves, all of them). With my PWM I maintained about 13-14 amps for the week with the PWM at about 60%. when the issue happened, i turned the PWM up to 100% and could only pull about 8 amps!

This cell is 13 SS switch plate covers with 1/16th" rubber gaskets in between so -nnnnn+nnnnn- 3quart resevoir, 30 amp PWM, 15 amp relay, 30 amp ammeter, 30 amp switch 1/2" hoses, secondary bubbler, 3/8 in and out ports

anyone know why this is happening? i Havent had a chance to figure it out cuz ive been stuck working like NONSTOP lately

[hhofox]

Hmmm... what colour is your reservoir's water? Does it have mud at the bottom? I am thinking that maybe the wall plates created mud inside the electrolyser and that's cutting down on your total area of reaction.
The mud could also be blocking the water holes between the cells, preventing the plates from getting any more electrolyte.
If the plates are not 316L then they give off some (toxic?) mud.
(I'd like to know if this will stop eventually -or will they always give off the mud?)
Anyhow, I'd give the unit a good cleaning and see what it does after that.

That's just my two cents.

[myoldyourgold]

Check the voltage at the reactor and then between each cell first. Try and determine if there is a short somewhere in the reactor. It might be your PWM took a dump. Try it direct without the PWM for a little and see what happens. If you are running full strength electrolyte it might peg your amp meter and fry it so be careful.

[aceras624]

Check the voltage at the reactor and then between each cell first. Try and determine if there is a short somewhere in the reactor. It might be your PWM took a dump. Try it direct without the PWM for a little and see what happens. If you are running full strength electrolyte it might peg your amp meter and fry it so be careful.

I hope my PWM didnt crap out its brand new!!! good idea about bypassing it though. I did just thin out the electrolyte so ill be able to direct connect it without any problem i suppose illl do that first and then if i get the same results, ill start checking for issues inside the cell with the voltage like you recomend. Thanks

[myoldyourgold]

If you have a lot of brown mud you need to rinse out the reactor with distilled water. What can happen is the brown muck collects at the bottom and shorts out some of the cells and in the end all of them. To prevent this you should keep the amps below10 amps for your reactor. If you push it you just make brown junk and very little good HHO. You can run the electrolyte through coffee filters. It will take quite a few if the electrolyte is really muddy. The filters plug up very quickly.

[aceras624]

yeah it seems like that is whats happening. Im just going to drain the system(probably suck it out with my mouth an spit it into a bucket, thats ok right and put my new bigger HHO cell on there its 316L so it shouldnt have such an issue.

gotta admit, the switch plate covers worked pretty well for like a week

Do you think the new HHO cell will have less of a problem because ive got the input on the corner of the square and rotated it 45 degrees so it is a diamond?

[aceras624]

Hmmm... what colour is your reservoir's water? Does it have mud at the bottom? I am thinking that maybe the wall plates created mud inside the electrolyser and that's cutting down on your total area of reaction.
The mud could also be blocking the water holes between the cells, preventing the plates from getting any more electrolyte.
If the plates are not 316L then they give off some (toxic?) mud.
(I'd like to know if this will stop eventually -or will they always give off the mud?)
Anyhow, I'd give the unit a good cleaning and see what it does after that.

That's just my two cents.

the water turned brown pretty quickly which I attribute to the low quality grade of steel in the plates

i was worried about the "mud" too. I was thinking maybe its sucking up current and dropping voltage or something.
Im just going to replace it with the newer bigger unit i made wiht 316L plates. Ill try to let you know what the problem was