All about electrolysers, HHO, joecells ect. :)

[kumaran]

Hi Jetijs,

Very nice video on torch experiment.

Foam during electrolysis is because of cold electrolyte. If newly prepared electrolyte (KOH + distil water), no foam builts up during electrolysis. The next day you may notice foam started to form. This is because of KOH or NaOH and nothing to do with JoeCell seeding or breeding stage. Joecell don't use any additives just pure ground water.

Any plan to test your electrolyser in 4 stroke engine?

[Jetijs]

Hi kumaran
The foam might be because of the electrolyte, but then again I am using neutral plates and it is the neutral plates that makes a joecell to operate in that unique way it does. Also in the first tries I operated the cell for about 30 minutes. I could feel that the electrolyte has become warm through the acrylic, but nevertheless there was no foam. It started to appear only in last days.

[kumaran]

Hi Jetijs,

To confirm the foam develops because of cold electrolyte, do the followings.

1. Run the electrolyser for about 30 minutes or more until electrolyte gets warm and no foam develops.
2. Now, drop a little bit of distil water into one of the cell and see if foam develops in that particular cell.
3. Or to make things easier, blow some cold air on surface of cell. See the changes to white gas foam.

If you use neutral plates, then you should not seperate the plates with cell divider. You made series cell. See the attached picture. I believe your design is similar to picture attached.

[ashtweth]

Guys we just ordered a kit for the Bob Boyce unit, and have the toroid (massive choke) here already.,

Am going to pilot scale this make a step by step for the forum ad get test results validated by a third party, accredited faculty. I will also apply for grants for Aron and the group. Thing is we need to replicate Arons and or a unit which exceeds faraday's in order for the no profit org i work for to get grants for open sourced engineers.

Any ways great thread. will keep every one updated on the bob boyce

Ash

[kumaran]

Hi Jetijs,

About my flashback arrestor, there is really nothing much to say. I just took a simple plastic tube, made a thread on each side so that I can screw in the brass fittings. Then I just stuffed the bronze wool inside the tube and screwed in the end fittings - that is all

I made the flashback arrestor as you explained. Only difference is I used steel fine wool instead of bronze fine wool. I add another safety bubbler (soft drink bottle) in line with new flash back arrestor.

First few test, yes the flash back arrestor works wonderful. After few test I notice small explosion happens in safety bubbler. I try to narrow down the problem and I found that if we light the gas output immediately after first test, the explosion happens in safety bubbler.

Then I use, commercial flashback arrestor. This one immediately stops the flashback. I could hear two explosion happens inside commecial flashback arrestor. First at output tip and second inside the flashback arrestor tube. Not even once the flashback goes to safety bubbler.

So Jetijs, I hope you throughly test your flashback arrestor before put for real use. I can't imagine if flashback happens inside electrolyser.

[Aaron]

commercial backflash arrestor

Kumara, please post details on your commercial backflash arrestor.

[kumaran]

Hi Aaron,

I have attached the commercial flashback arrestor which I used on yesterdays testing. I got this item free from my friend so I don't really know the price (should be very expensive).

[magnetO]

Guys we just ordered a kit for the Bob Boyce unit, ...

Hi ash,

would appreciate a few more info to the kit.

Who sells the kit?
Maybe later on some pics?

Thank you

magnetO

[ashtweth]

Hi magnetO

Sure the idea is to make step by step instructions of the panacea university document. We don't have any snaps yet, the seller is on ebay from the UK and offers the electronics kits. I am not aware of any body doing the plates as a kit and or both at this time.

Got to ebay and put in Bob boyce, the seller will come up

[Jetijs]

Hi kumaran,
You have to stuff the wool in the tube very tightly for the arrestor to work properly. I tested my arrestor dozens of times and every time I stop melting/cutting stuff, I turn the power off and let the flame get smaller and smaller till the pressure is small enough for the flame to travel to the flashback arrestor. Not once did the flame get to the bubbler. Maybe steel does not work as well as bronze. It is also possible, that your steel wool is not fine enough, my friend blew his bubbler because of this, he used a very coarse steel wool. I don't know, but this method has proven itself for many experimenters around youtube

[Jetijs]

Hi all
Today I finally blew up my bubbler. I made a new flashback arrestor for my friend, I stuffed it full with the bronze wool and lit the flame - everything worked fine till I shut the power off, the flame became smaller and smaller as usual and suddenly went into the tinny torch hole till it reached the wool. I saw a white smoke coming out of the torch (the plastic tube was melting) and a few seconds later the fire got all the way through the wool and into the bubbler. It is lucky that my friend put a cardboard box on the bubbler to prevent the pieces of flying around. At first I even said that there is no need for that, I was wrong. There was a loud bang And my bubbler exploded into small pieces.
This gave me the opportunity to disassemble the whole electrolyzer and inspect the plates and the plate connectors. Here are the pictures:









You can see how the KOH is slowly eating up the brass connectors turning them black. And this black stuff is collecting on the bottom of the cell. That means I need to find a better way to connect the plates together. Everything else seems fine.
Also I came to a conclusion that you shouldn't make the bubbler out of plexiglass, because it is hard and brittle. You need a flexible and soft plastic, because this is like slapping water with your hand, the faster you slap, the harder the water gets. The explosion/implosion of HHO gas is very fast and the harder the bubbler walls, the greater the possibility that the whole bubbler will explode rather than only the small cap will fly away.
Thanks,
Jetijs

[ren]

nice work Jet. Im glad you weren't hurt at all. This shows the importance of the flash back arrestor as a safety device.

Some stainless plate cut and bolted to the plates with good stainless bolts should fix your connection erosion. And make a bigger bubbler. I wonder if you could gut an old battery and modify the case?

[Jetijs]

You probably can use an old battery for an electrolyser case - thats a good idea BTW
In my case bolts for connecting plates are not an option, because the nuts and bolt heads are at least 3mm thick, this way the bolt head or nut would be the nearest place to the other plate. This would require some sort of insulation or something like that. I will see how connectors with different coatings work in KOH environment, I know there is tin coated brass connectors that could work and even gold plated ones
I think I understood why my new flashback arrestor did not work properly. I will draw a sketch and explain a little later
Thanks,
Jetijs

[Jetijs]

Ok, Here is a sketch:



Here you see how the bronze wool was stuffed in the torch in both situations. In the situation A (when the bubbler blew up) the bronze wool was not stuffed all the way till the smallest hole. That left an area for a small volume of gas to gather. This made possible for the flame to reach the plastic tubing and melt it getting farther and farther through the flash back arrestor till the end and then - BANG. In the situation B, the wool was stuffed all the way in till the smallest hole. This did not allow for the flame to travel till the plastic tubing and melt anything. Also the bronze wool was a little wet. This works well. So when you build your flashback arrestor, use a a metal tube and stuff the wool so that the least amount of gas volume can gather
Thanks.

[kumaran]

Bubbler explode

Hi Jetijs,

Sorry to hear this thing happens to you too. I'm a bit phobia in trying new flashback arrestor after two big explosions happens during my previous experiments. You mentioned that you turn off the power and let the flame gets smaller and smaller till no gas pressure to burn and flashback arrestor able to stop the flame. Hmmm... I doubt about that. Well, the electrolyser still produce gas even after the power turned off for sometime depends on how much charges stored on each plates. Expecting flashback arrestor to stop the slow burning flame will not happen. Instead the slow burning flame burns everything along the way from flashback arrestor until bubbler. I did spoilt many football inflator needle which I used to test for hydroxy torch.

Some one from other forums suggest to use shut off valve in between torch tip and flashback arrestor. He mentioned this will prevent the flames to travel until reach bubbler. Personally I have never tried this method yet but hopefully I’ll in my next test on flashback arrestor. Jetijs, I will try to use your suggestion to stuff the steel wool until bronze output nipple.