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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Oct 31, 2008 17:49:11 GMT -4
Nice link, thanks! Once again, Apollohoax has increased, not decreased, the intellectual value of the internet!
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sniffy
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Post by sniffy on Nov 3, 2008 13:07:42 GMT -4
I checked the resistance of tap water, about 10K ohms for a distance of a few inches. 10,000 D.C. Volts would be needed to drive an amp of current. There is no heating effect from a 555 timer at low frequencies.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Nov 3, 2008 17:54:38 GMT -4
Resistors and capacitors are, like, opposite!
For a capacitor dielectric, 10k ohms is too low. So what are you trying for? Steam, or electrolysis?
In my high school experiment (mentioned earlier) I used vinegar, table salt and baking soda variously to LOWER the resistance, so that electrolysis would be better. I don't remember the numerical specifics of my results, it was (eek!) 25 years ago. But I remember that each of the three increased the gas generation capacity above the baseline of tap water at my given input amperage (I used a thrift-store wall-wart DC power supply with the end cut off and soldered to my electrodes).
Halloween is over, so the wife's projects are ready to clean up. And I don't have to play Army again until January, so all my weekends are free. I'll start getting my bench cleared off for some experiments.
I have no idea where we're going with this, but it's interesting! And it's getting me back to my bench for the first time in months. Thanks.
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sniffy
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Post by sniffy on Nov 4, 2008 1:27:24 GMT -4
Just to clarify,
The direct current, DC, resistance is 10,000 ohms. Only direct current breaks water into hydrogen and water. The resistance is lowered with acid or salt, but this will corrode most metals.
An alternating current, AC, does not cause electrolysis. AC current passes through a capacitor. The higher the frequency the less the resistance. This type of resistance is called capacitive reactance.
It is calculated as 2 x pi x frequency x capacitance.
The total resistance at a set frequency is a combination of both.
In order to heat water, +/- rings would be close together, and the current would be at a high frequency.
A word a caution: 10 mHz at an amp or so sends out quite a radio signal. This signal will be picked up by TV's and radios, and of course, the feds will come around.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Nov 4, 2008 2:17:13 GMT -4
Not true. Each electrode collects both hydrogen and oxygen when driven with AC. With DC, one electrode collects H, one collects O2. You can collect electrodes separately or together. When you collect the Oxygen and Hydrogen together, it is called "Brown's Gas" and is highly flammable.
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sniffy
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Post by sniffy on Nov 4, 2008 9:35:25 GMT -4
I am looking at an experiment and details of electrolysis. www.crscientific.com/electrolysis.htmlThey agree with you. However, tap water does not conduct electricity well enough to generate gas. There are humidifiers that simply have line voltage in water. There is no mention of Brown's gas H2-O being generated. Also if AC caused electrolysis, microwave should do the same. I suspect that with AC, the oxygen and hydrogen would simply recombine. Quite often, things seem to be obvious; yet experiment will show the exact opposite.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Nov 4, 2008 12:46:56 GMT -4
Also if AC caused electrolysis, microwave should do the same. What?? No! Microwaves are RF emissions, in the frequency range of about 2 and half gigahertz (I don't remember the exact freq). It's "non ionizing radiation." That means that no ions are being created. The water molecules are being dragged back and forth by an electrical field. It's electromagnetic emissions, not electrons. Electrolysis happens by creating ions at the surface of the electrode. You actually pump electrons into the water (and out, on the other electrode), so the electron bond between the H's and O are broken. The oxygen and hydrogen are actually ions at that point. 60hz AC is slow enough that the ions have time to form, and the sine wave rise and fall is slow enough that the bubble of, say, H+ forms, then the voltage falls below the electrolysis threshold (about 1.25 v, if I remember correctly, you can do this with one fresh dry-cell, but not a NiCad which puts out 1.2v) and then the voltage swings the other way, rises above the threshold, O- bubbles form, and the voltage swings back the other way. If anything, the H+ and O- ions redistribute their charges and become H2 and O2 again. When they recombine to form H2O, energy is released. I know, I've done it. I blew up a peanut-butter jar (my beaker in my mom's basement) full of water when my electrodes accidentally touched and a couple of bubbles the size of pinheads sparked off. It's quite dramatic. Okay, here's a rough write up for what I'll do: --Hypothesis: AC electrolysis of water can be done. --Test methodology: 12vAC output from a transformer, connected to stainless steel electrodes. Gas from electrodes will be collected into separate containers. Setup will be repeated with 12vdc, using the same transformer, rectifying the output with a diode bridge. --Verification: If bubbles form on the electrodes they may be H2, O2, or steam. If steam, the volume of gas will vanish when the power is turned off and any heat dissapates. Using direct current, there should be twice the volume of gas in one receiving container as the other. Using alternating current, the gas in both containers should be the same volume. I started cleaning my bench yesterday, I should be able to do some tests in the next few days. I'll take pix and notes and post them. And yes, I'll wear safety glasses!
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Post by smlbstcbr on Nov 4, 2008 12:58:23 GMT -4
Just to clarify, The direct current, DC, resistance is 10,000 ohms. Only direct current breaks water into hydrogen and water. The resistance is lowered with acid or salt, but this will corrode most metals. An alternating current, AC, does not cause electrolysis. AC current passes through a capacitor. The higher the frequency the less the resistance. This type of resistance is called capacitive reactance. It is calculated as 2 x pi x frequency x capacitance. The total resistance at a set frequency is a combination of both. In order to heat water, +/- rings would be close together, and the current would be at a high frequency. A word a caution: 10 mHz at an amp or so sends out quite a radio signal. This signal will be picked up by TV's and radios, and of course, the feds will come around. Actually, the capacitive reactance is inv(2*pi*c*f)
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sniffy
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Post by sniffy on Nov 4, 2008 22:54:25 GMT -4
Whoops, capacitive reactance is inversely proportional to frequency. Thanks for the correction.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Nov 5, 2008 22:03:45 GMT -4
I did my first round of testing today.
Initial results: Alternating current will crack water, but DC is more than 4x more productive.
Probably, this is because HOH ionizes to H+ and OH-, and the ions have to drift around and equalizes their charges to get HH and OO. Also, the surface charge of the electrodes has to dissapate before the ionization can resume after the voltage reverses.
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sniffy
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Post by sniffy on Nov 6, 2008 13:07:55 GMT -4
The physical setup should have a resonant frequency. This can be determined by a sweep, which is a lot of bother. If it is modeled as an RLC circuit, the voltage should perk up at the resonant frequency, f in rads = 1 / (LC) ^ 1/2 or the square root of the inverse of the capacitance and inductance. This is for one dimension. A three dimensional object will have multiple peaks. I was wondering if the water could light up like a firefly, then you could see what is happening. Just for fun, here is how lightsticks work. chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/a/howlightsticks.htmI saved your avitar image, it is downloaded as full size. The full size, at 60k, is a bit much. I can make it a bit smaller and upload it; then connect it to this post.
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sniffy
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Post by sniffy on Nov 6, 2008 13:42:13 GMT -4
Here's your image at half size. If it was 64k, the reduced size would be around the square root = 8k. I suspect there is a relationship: As the frequency goes up, the electrolysis goes down.
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sniffy
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Post by sniffy on Nov 7, 2008 7:19:13 GMT -4
You can buy firefly luciferin for about $100 mg. Does not seem to be practical for light generation. The "eco-friendly" way is to use flourescence lights with mecury.members.fortunecity.com/anemaw/bioluminescence.htmIn order to produce light in the chemical reaction, luciferin must be oxidized with the aid of the natural enzyme, luciferase, an oxygenase (adds oxygen to compounds) which requires a substrate (luciferin) and oxygen (also may require salt) to excite electrons to make them transfer to a higher energy orbital. It is as such electrons fall back into their initial rest state that light is emitted. The reaction responsible for bioluminescence may be expressed thus: luciferin + luciferase + O2 + salt ---------> oxyluciferin + H2O + light + heat The reactants of the reaction may be bound collectively as a photoprotein and may be triggered to generate light by a calcium ion (Ca2+)(22) . It may also be noted that oxyluciferin reverts into luciferin in order to repeat the process to produce light and that although heat is a by-product of the reaction, there is little heat emitted from the reaction in relation to artificial methods of light production. The firefly, for use of an example, is known to be one of the most efficient lighting systems: though dim, the light of the firefly is approximately 90.0% efficient, with the release of 3.0% to heat. The average lightbulb, however, is only approximately 3.0% efficient, with a loss of heat of 97.0% (Chinery). In efforts to harness the efficiency of chemiluminescence, it has been discovered that the process is too expensive for human use.
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Post by ka9q on Jul 23, 2010 17:14:04 GMT -4
I just discovered this thread, and I have to say that I'm baffled. I can't understand the purpose of the invention, or how it's an improvement on the state of the art.
The apparent goal is to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy to drive a vehicle. We have had the technology to do that literally for centuries: it's called the electric motor. The technology is quite mature (though there have been recent improvements thanks to high power semiconductors), highly reliable and quite efficient (95+% is common at vehicular power levels).
You want to replace this with a heat engine, for which the severe limits on conversion efficiency imposed by the second law of thermodynamics are very well known. (ref: Carnot limit)
Furthermore you want to convert the electrical power input into heat in a rather exotic way (a laser) when the standard, simple and highly effective (100% efficient) method is with a cheap, simple, passive electrical component called a resistor.
Forgive me if none of this is making any sense at all.
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Post by ka9q on Jul 23, 2010 17:30:15 GMT -4
Now there is a set of problems related to the conversion of electric power to mechanical power for transportation that include various heat engines among the proposed solutions. They include:
Conversion of solar or nuclear energy (e.g., from a reactor or radioisotope) to electrical energy;
Storing electrical energy for both stationary and vehicular applications (i.e., transportation).
The energy storage problem on the moon is especially acute when the prime source is solar, due to the 2-week long lunar night. (Personally I think there's no viable alternative to the nuclear reactor, at least for early lunar bases, but I'm willing to be proved wrong with a workable alternative design.)
There are two established methods for the conversion of solar energy into electrical energy that could be viable on the moon: thermal and photovoltaic. The latter is simply the familiar solar panel. They're well established in spacecraft and their technology steadily continues to improve. But their costs are high, especially for the most efficient models.
The alternative is a heat engine. This could work well on the moon since the lunar vacuum makes it possible to maintain a large temperature difference between the solar collector and the radiator to deep space. (Every heat engine requires both a source of heat energy and a heat sink into which waste heat can be rejected at a lower temperature than the source.)
Solar heat engines have traditionally been cheaper, per watt, than photovoltaics and many have been more efficient too. It is not clear if this trend will continue as research into photovoltaics continues to produce units with higher and higher conversion efficiencies on sunlight. And it's not clear that cost is much of an advantage for anything that has to be lifted by rocket from the earth and soft-landed by rocket on the moon; the output per unit weight seems much more important. And here the advantage again seems to go to the photovoltaic panel.
The nuclear reactor would be especially useful for the waste heat it could continuously generate through the long and cold lunar night. And because of its higher operating temperature, the heat engine it drives would probably be smaller, lighter and more efficient than a heat engine driven by sunlight. On the other hand, the lack of a solar atmosphere would allow sunlight to be concentrated many times to provide a high temperature (and therefore more efficient) heat source for the heat engine. So the relative merits between solar and nuclear, I think, have to do with nuclear's ability to operate at night while solar can operate indefinitely without fuel.
It may turn out that there's a place for both solar and nuclear generation in the lunar base. Nuclear provides a baseline of both power and heat during the night, and solar power supports additional activities during the day that do not have to run continuously. These activities could include energy-intensive operations such as the production of oxygen from the lunar regolith, or the mining of water from shadowed craters at the poles and the production of elemental hydrogen (otherwise scarce on the moon) from that water. Of course, it may be possible to establish a polar lunar base in a position that gets continuous sunlight, and such a location would be ideal for solar power generation, but I'm sure the number of such sites would be rather limited.
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