Bedini, Meyer, capacitors, batteries and the electret effect

[Aaron]

hydrogen loading

Very interesting AC!

One thing I remember reading about - was probably just speculation,
I don't know but interesting about a possibility of hydrogen loading into
one of plates and it would accumulate over time...like a some kind
of hydride or something. So during the "electrolysis" process, some of this
stored hydrogen in the metal would be released.

I don't know if any of that plays into any of this. Haven't thought about
that for a long time.

[lamare]

Lamare,

I have showed this for years. Imhotep even mentioned it about a cap
that seems to not be able to die because it keeps itself charged up like
an electret - from a conditioning effect. Anyway, there is something to
it.

I think there is more than something to it. I think it is the key inventors like Bedini and Meyer have been been using all these years and therefore it is very important to try and understand what is actually happening.

The "boiling" effect isn't necessarily unwanted when charging batteries
with the Bedini method. They will COLD boil, even up to an hour after
the charger is disconnected if using for example, high capacitance low
voltage discharges.

Also, a cap can be charged with pure radiant and no measurable
"electron" current. A charged cap doesn't need to have electrons
piling on plates, etc...

You may find this interesting.
Eric Dollard Notes (1986--1991)
See page 26 of the pdf.

Batteries are water electrolysis cells. A water molecule is either
created or destroyed depending on if it is powering or being charged
and that what all the complicated battery chemistry comes down to.

And the concentric tubes ARE capacitors.

I have seen batteries charged with radiant that get a white coating
on the plates...batteries with clear see through walls so you can see
the liquid and plates inside. Just like the conditioning that has been
observed on many of the Meyer experiments. This is the observation
I brought to the table a long time ago.

I have studied this paper by Dollard recently, and I think he also makes some errors there. For example, he says: "Since no power is required to maintain a field, only current, the static or stationary field, represents stored energy" and "when voltage increases a reaction current flows into capacitance and thereby energy accumulates". With the last sentence, I made a note: "re-read Steinmetz, Eric!", because in the same paper, he quotes Steinmetz, who says it right: "There is obviously no more sense in thinking of the capacity current as current which charges the conductor [capacitor] with a quantity of electricity, than there is of speaking of the inductance voltage as charging the conductor [inductance] with a quantity of magnetism."

I think it is a fundamental error to think of a capacitor in terms of a "charge accumulator", that makes that you can never understand what is really happening. A field does not represent stored energy, nor is it static. What it really represents is an energy flow, flowing from the positive side of the dipole to the negative side. This is an infinite flow of energy, which is continuously provided by the dipole, which somehow converts some energy flow right from the vacuum into this flow of energy we call the electric field.

Since a polarized dielectricum contains a dipole (or actually multiple ones), a polarized dielectricum provides an infinite energy flow in the form of an electric field, as long as it is polarized. And that is most likely the main source of any excess energy that can be observed in both Bedini's circuits as Meyers fuell cell.

That brings me to the question "how does an isolator isolate, really?"

The standard answer is that no electrons can freely flow trough it, because there are none, so therefore it isolates. However, a dielectric can break down and once you are near the break-down voltage, it does conduct to a certain extent. The figure I showed above in this thread suggests that at voltages between 50 and 90% of the break-down voltage, there can be a considerable current going trough the dielectric, the isolator.

So, I ask myself, how are these properties as "dielectric strength" and "resistance" measured?
I think there would be no other way to measure these, as by putting the dielectric in between conducting contacts. So, whatever you do, you always measure the properties trough the plates of a capacitor around the dielectric. That is interesting, because we know that a dielectric becomes polarized when put in between charged capacitor plates and that the direction of polarization is opposite to the field of the capacitor plates. So, it may very well be that electrons can actually drift pretty easy trough an insulator, were it not that its polarization opposes any electron that felt like drifting trough.

In other words: it may very well be that the insulating properties of insulators are not really "electron flow blocking" properties, but "electron flow opposing field" properties, or at least a combination of the two....

Since the polarization of a dielectric is dependent of the field and not of any currents or something, and the polarization has its limits, at some point it will no longer be able to oppose the field from the capacitor plates and the electrons can freely drift trough the dielectricum. The dielectricum "breaks down".

If this is indeed what is happening, then it is clear that a part of the "charging" electrons go right trough the dielectricum, a part is probably trapped inside the dielectricum and a part stays put on the plates. And then it is also clear where a part of the electrons come from during discharge, they are drifting from the opposite plate, right trough the dielectricum, because the field of the plates is now less than the field of the dielectricum, so the dielectricum is able to induce a drift current of electrons right trough itself.

In normal circumstances, the thickness of the dielectricum layer is such that the normal operating voltage of an electrolytic capacitor is at about 80% of the dielectricum break-down voltage. Apparently, during normal circumstances, the polarization of the dielectricum is relatively weak and it decays pretty rapidly when the capacitor is "discharged". Apparantly, electrons can drift pretty easily into the dielectricum, but not that easily all the way trough.

It appears that when you super-polarize the dielectricum, that the field created by the delectricum extends relatively far beyond the dielectricum, and can be so powerfull that it can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, either "cold boiling" a battery or generating useful fuel for running an engine.

Since "radiantly conditioned" capacitors do not charge themselves very rapidly, nor do conditioned batteries, it appears that under such conditions the electron flow trough the dielectricum is quite limited. The field between the "plates", and especially inside the electrolyte between the conducting plate and the dielectricum, however, can be very strong for a long time.

So, it may very well be that Meyers solution turns out to be one of the most optimal ways to exploit this phenomenon, beside the Tesla Switch, because that also appears to be able to utilize the field without the need for a substantial drift current trough the dielectricum, because it recycles the charge in a very smart way.

[lamare]

I originally posted this around 5 years ago, this is the 2nd or 3rd time I
posted it after it kept getting deleted:
YouTube - Stan Meyer concentric tube test

Both the below vids are the 2nd or 3rd time I had to post them as well.

YouTube - Water Fuel Cell Conditioning
If I put a choke in series, the of course I can get higher voltaged
and lower current. I have built several variations of the vic for
straight up running the cells to produce gas and not for conditioning,
but haven't really posted anything on that. Anyway, I was the first
to point out the similarity of Meyer's circuits and Bedini's circuits way
back on icubenetwork before it got hacked and shut down.

YouTube - energeticforum's Channel

What I personally observed a long time ago was my inner tubes started
to get a pure white powder coating on them AND as this conditioning
process went on, which is a conditioning process even if
Meyer didn't have that same coating, the gas volume INCREASED consistently
as the white powder coating became more evenly spread across the
entire surface. This idea was based on actual experimental empirical
evidence.

So, it is not a myth that it allows for higher voltage with less current
with the benefit of increased gas production for less energy. It is a fact.
Again, I'm not disputing you about Meyer having no coating.

Thanks Aaron, very intersting video's.

What these show is that a certain coating, in this case on the negative tube, increases resistance and efficiency as well. It seems as though the coating appeared only at the outer side of the inner tubes, but that may be because of the video.


I think what you really want to do with this construction is to create electrolytic capacitors. The obvious choice for the positive tube would then be aluminium, because that is what is used in the industry in electrolytic capacitors, probably because the aluminum oxide layer that forms has good properties for electrolytic capacitors. And of course, the electret effect has been shown to work with normal electrolytic capacitors, which should be mainly aluminum based.

In the case of aluminum, the layer that forms, can be controlled by the applied voltage during "conditioning". This should be such that the normal desired operating voltage is about 80% of the conditioning voltage.

Given the experiments I referred to above in this thread, it would probably be a good idea to take aluminum tubes and condition them with soda.

For the negative tube, any metal could be used I think, as long as it keeps a good contact with the electrolyte, the water. However, aluminum should be fine, since that is what is used in electrolyte capacitors in the industry.

If you have formed an electrolyte capacitor this way (something in the order of 100 uF should be easily obtainable), you can charge that, and it should hold charge pretty reasonably. Given the "cold boiling" effects observed with Bedini chargers in batteries, one can expect gas production to continue even after the power has been shut off if "radiant charging" is used.

Anyway, these are just suggestions that should work if the theory that a polarized dielectric indeed can be used as a power source is correct. So, this may be interesting things to experiment with. I hope I can find some time in the not too distant future to experiment with this myself, but of course: good luck to anyone that feels like trying this...

[lamare]

So, first the water is pulsed by the VIC transformer in which voltage pressure acts on the water molecules the water responds by creating hydronium ions (H3O+) and a hydroxide ions (OH−). The hydroxide ion is forced very close to the positive electrode of the WFC and the hydronium to the negative electrode. The time it normally takes for water to reestablish equilibrium is around 1 pico second, this is the time to beat and that time is between the pulsing trains of the VIC transformer and the EEC. The EEC provides a B+ voltage field attracting the electron of the hydroxide ion giving it another path to follow that produces light in Meyers WFC set up. Meyer calls this a byproduct of the reaction in that it produces electricity. This flow of electricity to power up the bulb or amp consuming device is doing so by making water itself the ground to complete it's circuit path. This can only be done if the secondary of the VIC transformer is an isolated circuit and no real grounds exist in the system. When this circuit path is completed and the bulb is producing light the equilibrium of water has been upset, since it is a chemical reaction Meyer found out that it does not shut down when the power is turned off, this is due to reaction lag time in that the reaction takes time to reestablish equilibrium. This holds true for any chemical reaction. The pulsing trains of the EEC and VIC transformer overlap due to the shark tooth of the BMF in the VIC transformer so there is no lag time in beating the equilibrium constant of the water molecules 1 pico second time frame to reestablish equilibrium. This creates a path for the electrons to go and the bulb emits light and the current is being drawn from the water bath making this an endothermic reaction as energy is being taken from the system(water bath) and the scientist that looked at Stanley Meyers tubes all noted that after running for hours the temperature had not increased as it should have done if it where working like a Dr. Faraday type electrolysis reaction. And they also noted that something was different in this reaction and now you know how it is different .

@h2opower:

Let me say a few things about this. First of all, Meyer is not a saint. Neither is Bedini or even Tesla. All these guys have done great inventions, but as far as I am aware, there has never been a single person on this earth that has been right 100% of the time. If all inventions were to be taken "as is" and we make unfallable saints of our inventors, then our cars today would still look like this:



So, scientists should have the courage to "question everything" as Einstein once said and should have the courage to do away with a theory that does not explain everything anymore at some point. As a sidenote, I think we should even do away with Einsteins relativity theory, because it is based on an error: Dr Charles Kenneth Thornhill

Now you may be right with all the processes you describe as well as the timing issues involved with these processes, but there are two major arguments against this theory:
1. Bedini and others have observed batteries "cold boiling" without any consideration of the properties of water or any tuning based on any water properties. Still, the batteries can continue "cold boiling" for up to half an hour after the power has been shut off, clearly without any resonance or any other fast electro-magnetic gradients whatsoever occuring in the system after the power has been shut off. And of course, "cold boiling" is nothing other than the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen.
2. The processes you describe are basically chemical reactions and/or reactions a/o the flow of electricity that requires energy to be fed into the system in order for these processes to take place. As far as I can tell, no solid explanation has been given for where any excess energy might come from, other than that it must be "endothermic". If that were the case, you should see a (significant) drop of temperature of the water. And, if you would want to power a car out of "endothermic" reactions, you would need a hell of a lot of heat in order to keep your water liquid, given the amount of energy needed to keep a car moving. IMHO, there is no way "endothermic" energy could come even close to explain Meyers car running on water. If that were the case, there should have been a huge heat collector device somewhere on the car.

As far as I can tell, at this moment, the only explanation for the existence of excess energy in any capacitor-like system, be it Bedini's caps and batteries or Meyers fuell cell, is the more than likely existence of a super-polarized dielectricum somewhere between the capacitor plates. It appears that in all these systems electrolytic capacitors are being created, with various qualities, depending on things like the used materials and liquids. However, it is clear that such a polarized dielectricum provides an electric field and that the energy for that comes from the vacuum, as explained by Prof. Turtur: http://www.wbabin.net/physics/turtur1e.pdf (page 10-14).

The key to obtaining this energy source and utilizing it, can be found in Bedini's and Meyers technologies (as well as Stiffler) and the understanding of how an electrolytic capacitor works.

The dielectric layer formed in a normal electrolytic capacitor is very thin, and such that the dielectric breaks down at about 125% of the normal operating voltage. So, normally, the dielectric can never be polarized very strong, because the polarization is induced using a field created by the capacitor plates because of an electron flow from one plate to the other. So, at 125% of the normal operating voltage, the dielectricum shorts out and no further polarization is possible.

However, an electro(-magnetic) field can exist of its own, without need for any charge carriers (electrons). So, if you would polarize the dielectricum with an electro-magnetic or electric field, the maximum polarization possible is no longer bound by the dielectric break-down properties of the dielectric.

What you apparantly get then, is a super-polarized dielectricum in between capacitor plates and an electrolyte, which creates an electric field that is much stronger than the field created by the capacitor plates. Since under normal circumstances, these two opposing(!) fields are of comparable strength, the net field in the dielectricum is relatively small or even close to zero, so the polarization inside the dielectricum cannot maintain itself, it is weakened by the field of the capacitor plates.

When the dielectricum is very strongly polarized, however, the field created by the capacitor plates is limited, because at some point the dielectric breaks down and electrons drift from one plate to the other. In other words: the field in between the capacitor plates created by the dielectricum is no longer largely canceled by the field created by the capacitor plates. This has two advantages:
1) the dielectricum can keep its polarization much longer
2) since the electric field created by the polarized dielectricum is no longer largely cancelled out by the field created by the plates, it extends well into the electrolyte fluid, the water.

So, the end result is that you have a semi-permanent electric field in between the dielectricum and the negatice capacitor plate, which can be utilized for free to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. And this is not the same as "Faraday electrolysis", because that talks about "electricity" or current:

Faraday's laws of electrolysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Faraday's 1st Law of Electrolysis - The mass of a substance altered at an electrode during electrolysis is directly proportional to the quantity of electricity transferred at that electrode. Quantity of electricity refers to the quantity of electrical charge, typically measured in coulomb."

However, in between the dielectric and the negative capacitor plates, there hardly is any current going trough, and the current that does go trough is actually a leaking current. This type of electrolysis is purely caused by the electric field, not by ramming any charge trough the water.

This patent clearly shows that it is possible to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric field only:
http://sdch2o.free.fr/vrac/GB%202.32...20R.Eccles.pdf

So, all the ingredients are there. Use a strongly-polarized dielectricum to get a strong electric field for free in betweeen your capacitor plates, put water in between the dielectric and the negative plate, and the field created by the dielectricum splits your water for free. The only energy you need to put in, is the energy that is needed to maintain the polarization of the dielectricum.

One more thing I'd like to add:
Since all of these systems are essentially electrolytic capacitors, it may very well be possible to use fuel cells in circuits like the Tesla switch and the scalar charger. That way, you could create self-running systems that provide electricity as well as fuel for free.

[Aaron]

charging

When the battery charged for an hour after removing the charger,
I only experienced it after charging with capacitance discharges.

For example, if the battery is 12v, I'd charge a cap bank around 200,000uf
and 15~16 volts... just a few volts over the battery and discharge every
2 seconds or so. Doing that for about an hour then turning it off, you get
2 hours of charging total and it isn't a phantom charge.

That charge that continues for an hour powers a load, even inductive load
pretty decent. I used that charge to power an electric scooter and I'd ride
it down to Bedini's shop from my office.

Anyway, the Eccles explanation you give is about the same as Tay Hee
Han. If you search online, you may find some French forum discussing it
with some replications. I don't recall their results but they mentioned
Tay Hee Han and showed pics and vids of an Eccles replication.

[lamare]

Anyway, the Eccles explanation you give is about the same as Tay Hee
Han. If you search online, you may find some French forum discussing it
with some replications. I don't recall their results but they mentioned
Tay Hee Han and showed pics and vids of an Eccles replication.

Thanks Aaron, I will study these more closely. I just skipped trough them and concluded they confirm that water can be split by the field only and not much more.

These are also discussed here:
most promising water split

One interesting quote:

I designed something very similar to this and see no point why it would not work, actually I'm building now a power supply for HV DC to do some tests. I do not believe they achieved it with that small field strengths, i 'm aiming at 50kV/mm in my next setup. With 20kV in 3mm(1mm thick plastic with distilated water in between) setup i couldn't see any bubble under the microscope.It's known fact that water breakes up in high electric fields, just like it does in very high temps. Make some googling and u will be able to find some papers about it. The problem is the field strength required is great so the setup must be very thin to work in any amateur setup.

Note that with a dielectric layer of about 2um on your positive tube, you already get a field strength of 50kV/mm inside the dielectric layer with a voltage of 100V across the dielectric (50KV/mm = 50V/um). For a layer of 1 um, you would only need 50V. So, when polarizing the thin dielectric layer with strong EM pulses, it seems certainly possible to come within the range of the required field strengths in the area around the dielectric, *if* the field created by the metal plates is not too strong.

[lamare]

When the battery charged for an hour after removing the charger,
I only experienced it after charging with capacitance discharges.

For example, if the battery is 12v, I'd charge a cap bank around 200,000uf
and 15~16 volts... just a few volts over the battery and discharge every
2 seconds or so. Doing that for about an hour then turning it off, you get
2 hours of charging total and it isn't a phantom charge.

That charge that continues for an hour powers a load, even inductive load
pretty decent. I used that charge to power an electric scooter and I'd ride
it down to Bedini's shop from my office.

Man, are you lucky to live so close to Bedini!

Anyway, this is also very interesting. It shows that you can get this cold boiling effect with a low voltage, when the voltage is indeed over the normal operating voltage and you are pulsing the battery.

Were this conditioned batteries or new ones??

Anyway, this suggests that you can also super-polarize the thin dielectric layer on the positive plate, by using over-potential DC pulses. While steady DC should normally cause the dielectric to break down, apparantly this is at least not catastrophic when you use sufficiently short pulses. So, this seams to be a second possibility by which you can over-polarize the dielectric, without breaking it down physically.

To sum the whole thing up:

While it is still not totally clear how the dielectric layer behaves exactly, I think it is clear that it is possible to create a strong electric field inside the very thin dielectric, caused by a strong polarization of the dielectric, which can remain polarized for a considerable period of time. As long as this field is considerably stronger than the (opposing!) field created by the capacitor plates, of which one is extented trough the electrolyte liquid to the "surface" of the electrolyte "touching" the dielectric, then the electrolytic capacitor charges itself, apparantly because a significant leakage current goes trough the dielectric. At the same time the strong field inside the dielectric extends well into the electrolyte, and that can cause water to split one way or another into hydrogen and oxygen, whatever intermediate chemicals may be present. This can be observed as "cold boiling" of a battery or gas production in a fuel cell, which are one and the same regarding this process: an electrolytic capacitor. This process has nothing to do with any resonance or timing critical effects, because it has been observed in batteries that these can continue boiling long after the power supply has been shut off.

[lamare]

Opened cap

In order to get an idea about how a dielectric layer on aluminium would look like, I opened up an electrolytic capacitor of 33 uF / 30+ V. You can see what it looks like in the attached picture.

The aluminum foils are light-grey, so it is visible that some layer is present on the foil. As you can see, the layer can be easily scratched with a knife, and then the shining metal underneath becomes visible.

I tried to measure the resistance of the layer, which is not easy. Most of the time I measured a resistance in the order of 10 Ohms, which was also the resistance of the aluminum itself. However, sometimes when I tried to connect the probes very gently, the resistance appeared to vary between something like 500 Ohms and 2 k. However, these are not reliable measurements, indications at best.

[sucahyo]

I think what you really want to do with this construction is to create electrolytic capacitors. The obvious choice for the positive tube would then be aluminium, because that is what is used in the industry in electrolytic capacitors, probably because the aluminum oxide layer that forms has good properties for electrolytic capacitors. And of course, the electret effect has been shown to work with normal electrolytic capacitors, which should be mainly aluminum based.

Alumunium will corrode as positive. Much much faster than even SS304. If alumunium do not have to be in contact water, maybe a nickel coated alumunium is better. Never heard its use before though, I only heard nickel coated copper or nickel coated silver.

[lamare]

Alumunium will corrode as positive. Much much faster than even SS304. If alumunium do not have to be in contact water, maybe a nickel coated alumunium is better. Never heard its use before though, I only heard nickel coated copper or nickel coated silver.

@sucahyo: You want it to corrode, because the layer that is formed because of the corrosion, is some form of aluminum oxide. And it is exactly this oxide that has the dielectric properties we want, both in terms of insulating and of polarization properties. The interesting thing about this layer is that it not only insulates, but it also "seals" the aluminum, preventing further corrosion, unless a sufficiently large voltage is applied to the plate with respect tot the water / chemical solution. In other words: you can control how thick the oxide layer becomes, because you can control how much voltage you apply during conditioning. Interestingly, the dielectric breakdown voltage of the layer becomes (almost?) equal to voltage applied during conditioning, so you can control both the thickness of the dielectric layer as well as its break-down voltage, the voltage at which the dielectric suddenly becomes a conductor, by the voltage applied during conditioning.

Now I'm not a chemicist, so I don't really know whether or not multiple types of aluminum oxide are possible and that we are interested in only one specific type. However, these pages show that when conditioning aluminum with soda, you get the right type and you can make electrolytic capacitors this way:

Borax or Baking Soda Rectifier and the glow.
Baking Soda Variable Electrolytic Capacitor.

Let me add that it may be necessary that there should always be some soda present in the fuell cell, because during operation the dielectric layer will tend to grow further because of the over-potential we want to feed it with, unless this can be prevented by using a current-less EM field instead of over-voltage pulsing for polarization of the dielectric. It may also be that the exact opposite, soda not being present, can prevent further growing of the dielectric layer, maybe at the expense of unwanted types of oxide growing instead. It may also be that you have to take care of what type of water you use during conditioning and/or operation (demineralised or destilled) since there may be unwanted chemicals in tapwater that could have unwanted side effects.

However, at this moment, I can't say anything sensible on that, other than referring to the above two links for further information. From that, it appears that tapwater is fine, but this may depend on local conditions.

Finally, one has to take care of how electric contact is made with the positive plate, because it has to be(come) insulated from the water. So, you can only use either insulated wires and non-conducting screws and other fastening material, or you can use aluminum if you take care that during conditioning all aluminum is submerged under the liquid and take care that after conditioning no mechanical stress is applied that can break the thin and mechanically sensitive layer.

[lamare]

Now the new reactions after the GP has stripped the electrons off of the oxygen atom are known as ionic reactions.

@h2opower:

Interesting story. The above quoted part is the key, IMHO.

I have all the confidence you are completely right about the kJ/mol calculations you performed. These reactions apparantly can deliver energy, but you have to provide the energy for stripping of the electrons, before you get the reaction with the positive end result.

Now where does that energy come from???

Now each water droplet is charged to the splitting voltage over and over again by the 50 kHz(plus) power supply to the voltage zones of the injectors.

Once again, the answer is: the electric field, in this case pretty high frequency and high voltages over micro capacitors, if I understand this right. I don't know any further details, but I bet you are using some form of resonance to get the high frequency, high voltage signal, meaning that you only have to provide the energy that is being lost in the resonating circuit yourself, while the electric field caused by this resonating system provides the actual benefitial energy. This is being converted for free from the vacuum by the charge carriers that are being pushed and pulled around in your resonator into an electric field between your (micro)capacitor plates, which eventually powers the ionization process, right?

[Aaron]

mechanical switch

Were this conditioned batteries or new ones??

They were used 12v 7ah gel cells at that time.

I forgot to mention that the discharge was with a mechanical pulley
that triggered the switch.... mechanical copper brush switch and not
a solid state switch. It is best with mechanical switch.

[sucahyo]

@sucahyo: You want it to corrode, because the layer that is formed because of the corrosion, is some form of aluminum oxide. And it is exactly this oxide that has the dielectric properties we want, both in terms of insulating and of polarization properties. The interesting thing about this layer is that it not only insulates, but it also "seals" the aluminum, preventing further corrosion, unless a sufficiently large voltage is applied to the plate with respect tot the water / chemical solution.

My experiment with aluminium as positive (12V around <0.5A) show that oxide do not prevent corrotion. My white powder coating happen a lot less on positive electrode. Maybe you need <1mA current, since at 10mA the aluminium still produce decent bubble. However I doubt we can get any hho since even meyer use 50mA.

Aluminium will react to baking soda even without current, I think this is unwanted. Since that baking soda will turn into NaOH after a while in electrolysis, I think a stream of baking soda solution have to be added continuously for your idea.

Attachment is aluminium plate from carbon negative & alumunium positive experiment.

However, I will try and see with 100mA radiant output.
Edit:
The aluminium oxide float. They don't form on aluminium surface. Aluminium will still corrode, and it will be very rapid. I think at 1 amp it would only last 24 hours.

[lamare]

My experiment with aluminium as positive (12V around <0.5A) show that oxide do not prevent corrotion. My white powder coating happen a lot less on positive electrode. Maybe you need <1mA current, since at 10mA the aluminium still produce decent bubble. However I doubt we can get any hho since even meyer use 50mA.

Aluminium will react to baking soda even without current, I think this is unwanted. Since that baking soda will turn into NaOH after a while in electrolysis, I think a stream of baking soda solution have to be added continuously for your idea.

Attachment is aluminium plate from carbon negative & alumunium positive experiment.

However, I will try and see with 100mA radiant output.
Edit:
The aluminium oxide float. They don't form on aluminium surface. Aluminium will still corrode, and it will be very rapid. I think at 1 amp it would only last 24 hours.

I have done some experiments today, using aluminum and copper. It seems that the white powder that forms on the aluminum tube comes from minerals from the tapwater, since when I used demineralised water, I don't get any white powder.

It looks like I can indeed make a capacitor this way, but it leaks quite terribly. So, I going to see if I can get some Borax. That may work better:

Electrolytic capacitor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A major problem was that most electrolytes tended to dissolve the oxide layer again when the power is removed, but he eventually found that sodium perborate (borax) would allow the layer to be formed and not attack it afterwards.

The electrolyte is usually boric acid or sodium borate in aqueous solution, together with various sugars or ethylene glycol which are added to retard evaporation.

There are three major types of water-based electrolytes for aluminium electrolytic capacitors: standard water-based (with 40-70% water), and those containing ethylene glycol or dipropyl ketone (both with less than 25% water). The water content helps lowering the equivalent series resistance, but can make the capacitor prone to generating gas, especially if the electrolyte formulation is faulty; this is a leading cause of capacitor plague, to which the high water content electrolytes are more susceptible.

[lamare]

I have made a video of some of my experiments.

I used an aluminum tube as positive and a copper plate as negative. It appears that the white powder is Calcium Carbonate, since we have hard water over here. After a few runs, grinding the tube between runs, the white powder no longer appeared. And with demineralised water, it also did not appear.

Interestingly, the white powder appeared on the outside of the positive tube, not on the copper plate at all, where with stainless steel tubes, you get the powder on the negative tube.
This suggests that the dielectric layer is indeed formed, since the negative plate of the electrolytic capacitor is at the surface of the dielectric. So, that's probably why in this case we get a deposit layer on the postive tube.

I have also done some experiments with an imhotep fan. This suggests that indeed a capacitor is formed. On the scope I see the fan charging the cap with spikes, and then the cap discharges when the spikes are gone. IIRC the fan was able to keep it charged at something in the order of 1-3V.

The video is at: YouTube - cap_experiments_.avi