Closed-Loop Electrolyser

[Farrah Day]

Using a Slayer Exciter, I intend to introduce a large coil L1 (currently under construction), directly into the center of the cell as depicted by the attached link.

Imageshack - clele3.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

In such close proximity to the coil, water on both sides should be induced to greatly ionise. The centre and outside electrodes provide a constant voltage in order to create a separation of the induced ions and prevent the water molecule reforming. The electrodes in between are the charge exchange medium required to allow the ions to exchange charges, become atoms and so evolve as gas. The diodes act as bridge to allow charges to flow. I expect that a salt bridge may be just as effective here.

An extremely simple concept.

What may be a little more involved, is determining the best frequency/voltage developed by the Slayer Exciter for optimum results. I intend to wind various coils and record frequencies in the hope of narrowing this down a little.

This is where variable tuning of the Slayer Exciter might come in handy.

Will be posting results here as and when.

[Farrah Day]

Ok, in order not to clog up Jonny Davro's thread up too much with what I'm doing, I'll stick to posting my results here.

Thanks to recent developments showing very promising results, I intend to use a Slayer exciter to induce ionisation of the water in my electrolyser.

My secondary or L1 coil consists of 1450 turns of SWG34 enamelled copper wire wound on a (2.75") 70mm diameter former. The winding itself is 15.5 inches long.

Imageshack - dscn1491r.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

The coil has a dc resistance of 123 ohms and an inductance of approx. 23mH.

In order to determine the coil's primary resonant frequency, I performed the test that is described in the following link:

Jamie Oliver's Tesla Coil Demonstration Page

This indicated that my L1 secondary coil has a resonant frequency of 310KHz.

In order to get the best from my coil, I now simply need to match the primary coil to this frequency, which I will do shortly, again following the instructions described in the link above.

310KHz provides photon energies at lot less than those provided by UV, which is what is normally required to ionise an atom. However, the UV EMR provides photons with enough energy to completely remove an electron from an atom, with the water molecule, we are helped by the oxygen atom's attraction, so just maybe we can get away with photons of lower electron volt levels.

Will have some additional info, hopefully some results, posted here soon.

[Farrah Day]

Some test results.

Using a Slayer exciter with a 2N3053 transistor and 6v supply, I fired up my new secondary (L1) coil today.

Imageshack - dscn1495t.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

I'd made a pancake coil primary, but needed to fine tune it. The pancake primary consisted of bare solid copper wire (the bare earth wire used in UK 1mm sq, solid twin and earth lighting cable). Using around 4 ft of the wire I made my pancake by super-gluing it to a cardboard former which I could then simply pop over my secondary.

Imageshack - dscn1503e.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

I hoped that I'd made enough turns to enable me to tune it to the 310KHz resonant frequency of my secondary by experimentation. All I had to do was test the response at different places on the primary. However, it turns out that I did not put enough turns on my primary as it's around 100KHz out of tune at the coils most extreme.

To make it easier for me, I hooked up my frequency counter, which showed 417KHz. If I moved my outer primary connection toward the inner windings, then the frequency meter reading went up significantly, in fact to over 2MHz on the very inner winding. Naturally as this happened, and the coils became drastically out of tune, my test neon and LED AV indicators faded.

Imageshack - dscn1496t.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

However, even at 417KHz, my secondary coil could still light a neon from around 8 inches and fire a flourescent tube at about 2 inches away. I could also get a 2mm corona discharge to my finger, which whilst not shocking, did eventually start to burn my flesh!

So I need to make a larger primary, but while I had things set up I thought I'd see what would happen if I tried a spot of electrolysis.

Imageshack - dscn1504g.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

Well... absolutely nothing. Now, considering that I had managed electrolysis with a small secondary coil recently, I was a little suprised to get nothing at all. (Small coil is behind larger coil in this photo).

Imageshack - dscn1501l.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

However, as soon as I connected the seconadary coil to electrodes in a jar of water via an AV Plug, look what happened to the tuning:

Imageshack - dscn1505j.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

Yep, I instantly further de-tuned the system to 1.78MHz. With the electrodes connected, my neon would not even light when I touched the secondary coil. Once I took off the connection to the water everything came back as was.

It takes very little to detune the system... and yet my small coil performed electrolysis quite well. The only thing I can think of is that the water in that particular case bought the system somewhat more into tune. I'll redo that experiment with the frequency meter attached and see what was going on. The coils could not have been that in tune though, as my transistors were cooking, and clearly the more in tune the coils, the less power dissipated in the transistor. Hmmm..

So, it still needs to be determined if a specific frequency is critical to ionising the water, or simply the higher the electric field the better. This I intend to find out soon.

First, I need to fabricate a much larger primary that will allow me to compensate for the detuning effect of the water. More to follow...

[TheCell]

Ok, in order not to clog up Jonny Davro's thread up too much with what I'm doing, I'll stick to posting my results here.
.......
Will have some additional info, hopefully some results, posted here soon.

Farrah Day,

You are correct, I didn't mean to clog up JD thread, so I will repost here, where it makes more sense...as the final goal is the same here.

The Reason for this research...or at least one of them
This question had been asked recently...what are we doing all of this for?

As our goal is electrolysis...

YouTube - The Plate SEC

Use the rest of your imagination....

Some very good results


One additional question, what kind of results did you get...

Thanks,

Bob Potchen

[Farrah Day]

Hi Bob, great video.

I've been doing further experiments today, and now have my transistor running cool.

I tested my small secondary coil again and found that it was operating at around 8MHz. I'm yet to actually determine it's resonant frequency.

Anyway, went back to my new large scondary coil to try a few more things. And, although I couldn't get my ss electrodes to electrolyse the water in the jar, using 1N4148 diodes in AV plug configuration from the coil provided electrolysis, so too did the LED AV plug.

What I also discovered was that I did not need the AV plug connected to the top of the secondary coil. (See link) I could have the diode leads in the water and connect the other end of the AV Plug to earth, and it worked fine.

Imageshack - avplug2.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

Also, either one of the LED legs in the water would see that diode light up, while the other did not, and vice-versa.

Tuning is going to be a painful process as even my presence near the coils was affecting the frequency. Also I was using a mains multimeter for current readings as my portable digital was being somewhat erratic - I had 3 decimal points! However, even that was showing me drawing 1.7 Amps with no load on the secondary at 427KHz and 800mA at 900KHz when the AV plug was in the jar of water, yet my tranny was staying cool, so I suspect that reading was wrong - particularly as I noticed the presence of the mains multimeter itself was affecting the coil output.

[TheCell]

Test results from different Coils

Wound some coils with different sizes and with some surprising results....

And watch out for the plasma...it burns!!

YouTube - Making Plasma and testing the different Tower configurations


Bob Potchen

[Farrah Day]

Good stuff Bob.

Curious tho', what capacitance are you trying to read with the meter, and how? Surely you mean to find the inductance of the coil.

Have you done any tests to determine the resonant frequency of those coils?

[Farrah Day]

Further update:

I did try to determine the resonant frequency of my smaller secondary L1 coil using the method provided by Jamie Oliver's link. However, my sig. gen. only goes to 1.2MHz, and it soon became clear that the small coils resonant frequency is much higher than this.

Still not yet made a larger primary coil to match my large secondary, but nevertheless undertook some interesting experiments today.

The link details good electrolysis action from stainless steel electrodes.

Imageshack - avplug3.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

Additional note:

With reference to the link above, when using de-ionised water, electrolysis was evident, and given that there should be no foreign ionic species within this water it has to be assumed that the Slayer Exciter is inducing the water to ionise, as I really don't think that this much gas would evolve from water self-ionising. Adding a few pinches of sodium sulphate increased the gas evolution dramatically, so more current was flowing through the AV Plug and yet, the current draw through the Slayer Exciter remained constant. This is great news!

[Farrah Day]

Note:

Having a frequency counter at hand is extremely useful to enable you to get an instant picture of how the output frequency behaves. But the whole set up is so sensitive, that even connecting the frequency counter throws off the frequency and hence affects the secondary coil output.

I have gotten around this by using one of JD's AV Plug LED indicators.

With one of these indicators in close proximity to the secondary L1 coil, and the frequency counter +ve connected to a leg of a diode, I get the operating frequency readout, but do not affect - or disturb - the coil output frequency.

I sorted my ammeter out too. I was getting multiple decimal places show up which confused the issue, but now can confirm that my current draw was just 175mA coil unloaded and 65mA loaded (as opposed to 1.75A and 650mA posted earlier). And I'm yet to destroy a transistor!

Today I fabricate a larger primary to match to the 310KHz secondary.

How's it going Bob?

[Armagdn03]

Some test results.

Using a Slayer exciter with a 2N3053 transistor and 6v supply, I fired up my new secondary (L1) coil today.

Imageshack - dscn1495t.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

I'd made a pancake coil primary, but needed to fine tune it. The pancake primary consisted of bare solid copper wire (the bare earth wire used in UK 1mm sq, solid twin and earth lighting cable). Using around 4 ft of the wire I made my pancake by super-gluing it to a cardboard former which I could then simply pop over my secondary.

Imageshack - dscn1503e.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

I hoped that I'd made enough turns to enable me to tune it to the 310KHz resonant frequency of my secondary by experimentation. All I had to do was test the response at different places on the primary. However, it turns out that I did not put enough turns on my primary as it's around 100KHz out of tune at the coils most extreme.

To make it easier for me, I hooked up my frequency counter, which showed 417KHz. If I moved my outer primary connection toward the inner windings, then the frequency meter reading went up significantly, in fact to over 2MHz on the very inner winding. Naturally as this happened, and the coils became drastically out of tune, my test neon and LED AV indicators faded.

Imageshack - dscn1496t.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

However, even at 417KHz, my secondary coil could still light a neon from around 8 inches and fire a flourescent tube at about 2 inches away. I could also get a 2mm corona discharge to my finger, which whilst not shocking, did eventually start to burn my flesh!

So I need to make a larger primary, but while I had things set up I thought I'd see what would happen if I tried a spot of electrolysis.

Imageshack - dscn1504g.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

Well... absolutely nothing. Now, considering that I had managed electrolysis with a small secondary coil recently, I was a little suprised to get nothing at all. (Small coil is behind larger coil in this photo).

Imageshack - dscn1501l.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

However, as soon as I connected the seconadary coil to electrodes in a jar of water via an AV Plug, look what happened to the tuning:

Imageshack - dscn1505j.jpg - Uploaded by FarrahDay

Yep, I instantly further de-tuned the system to 1.78MHz. With the electrodes connected, my neon would not even light when I touched the secondary coil. Once I took off the connection to the water everything came back as was.

It takes very little to detune the system... and yet my small coil performed electrolysis quite well. The only thing I can think of is that the water in that particular case bought the system somewhat more into tune. I'll redo that experiment with the frequency meter attached and see what was going on. The coils could not have been that in tune though, as my transistors were cooking, and clearly the more in tune the coils, the less power dissipated in the transistor. Hmmm..

So, it still needs to be determined if a specific frequency is critical to ionizing the water, or simply the higher the electric field the better. This I intend to find out soon.

First, I need to fabricate a much larger primary that will allow me to compensate for the detuning effect of the water. More to follow...

I have noticed that you are winding your secondaries close inter-winding proximity giving you large parasitic capacitance within the coil. Problem is that your electrolyser is acting as a capacitive element. You may have 70% or so of your capacity contained within your coil. This means that each inductive discharge of your coil will only place 30% or so of your energy into your electrolyser, and the remaining will discharge into the parasitic interwinding capacitance.

Problem 2,

When you adjust to fix the above state problem, your resonant frequency will increase significantly, which it sounds like you don't want.


I have seen a few people try and use the "tuned electrolyser" approach. Even had Bob "TheCell" give me a call a while back to chat about such an option. However there are many things to consider that are not readily apparent. The standard approach taken by most which appears to be what you are doing, is definitely the launch pad, however far from the goal.

Nice looking build, good attention to detail, and solid theoretical ground on which to build, I think you will do great!

[Farrah Day]

Hi A03

I have noticed that you are winding your secondaries close inter-winding proximity giving you large parasitic capacitance within the coil. Problem is that your electrolyser is acting as a capacitive element. You may have 70% or so of your capacity contained within your coil. This means that each inductive discharge of your coil will only place 30% or so of your energy into your electrolyser, and the remaining will discharge into the parasitic interwinding capacitance.

Problem 2,

When you adjust to fix the above state problem, your resonant frequency will increase significantly, which it sounds like you don't want.


I have seen a few people try and use the "tuned electrolyser" approach. Even had Bob "TheCell" give me a call a while back to chat about such an option. However there are many things to consider that are not readily apparent. The standard approach taken by most which appears to be what you are doing, is definitely the launch pad, however far from the goal.

Nice looking build, good attention to detail, and solid theoretical ground on which to build, I think you will do great!

There's a lot of suck-it-and-see going on.

I'm not discharging the secondary into the water as a plasma arc as such, and clearly the water is absorbing and indeed containing much of the secondary energy.

Matching the primary and secondary coils is the first step required to up the energy output. But apart from the tuning issue, I daresay there are many other details that will need to be dealt with in due course. One hurdle at a time.

Anyway, just finished making my new primary, so off to give it a whirl!

[Armagdn03]

Hi A03



There's a lot of suck-it-and-see going on.

I'm not discharging the secondary into the water as a plasma arc as such, and clearly the water is absorbing and indeed containing much of the secondary energy.

Matching the primary and secondary coils is the first step required to up the energy output. But apart from the tuning issue, I daresay there are many other details that will need to be dealt with in due course. One hurdle at a time.

Anyway, just finished making my new primary, so off to give it a whirl!

suck-it-and-see going

Not familiar with this quote...

But anyways, Great start, hope you get far, and I will be paying attention!

[TheCell]

Quote:
I have noticed that you are winding your secondaries close inter-winding proximity giving you large parasitic capacitance within the coil. Problem is that your electrolyser is acting as a capacitive element. You may have 70% or so of your capacity contained within your coil. This means that each inductive discharge of your coil will only place 30% or so of your energy into your electrolyser, and the remaining will discharge into the parasitic interwinding capacitance.
Quote:

FarrahDay,

Now you see why I was trying to test the coils for capacitance...we know what our cell is for "capacitance"...I probably misspoke myself on the video, nothing new for me, my wife tells me that all the time, and of COURSE she is NEVER wrong...(I'm well trained).

Inductance is only one part of the "issue", when I have the solution, or balance I will post it....close, but no cigar as of yet....

@Armagdn03, if you are the same one in WI then thanks again for the discussion and your videos...they gave me the idea to try and balance the coil and cell as one complete "capacitor" and then work on the inductance issues etc.


Thanks again...

Bob Potchen

[Farrah Day]

In a normal Tesla coil set up, a toroid of specific capacitance is normally sitting on top of the secondary. But in our case, as I'm discovering it is not as easy as configuring the system as a normal Tesla coil.

This is not something I'm familiar with, so it is a steep learning curve and much of it is happening by trial and error.

I tried my new primary and it did not change anything. It seems that my secondary in practice likes to resonate at 427KHz. If I move the connection on the primary pancake coil towards the inner windings, the frequency goes up, but so does the current draw through the cct. If move the connection back out on the primary windings, there comes a point whereby the secondary is resonating at 427KHz, and any further out on the primary (as I discovered with my larger primary) has no effect on either the secondary 427KHz frequency or the current draw.

It is clear though that I still have tuning issues as higher frequencies and higher current draw radiates greater energy.

Ultimate goal is to obtain minimum current draw for maximum energy radiation as per JD's twin Slayer Exciter. Though I'm going to persevere with this cct in an attempt to better fully understand it before I move on. I feel it's just a matter of getting everything carefully matched. Maybe I do need a toroid of sorts to better couple the coil to the surroundings.

[Vickers]

What nature of water are u using Farrah Day?