(Note: upon actual testing and later analysis this might not exactly work as intended. See "EDIT 2019-06-21" in another comment of mine further below)
(third image from this link)
The recent and not-so-recent claims of vibrations in the acoustic and possibly ultrasonic range being beneficial for electrolysis and anomalous LENR effects made me think whether something similar could be accomplished with a much simpler and cost-effective electrode arrangement. The solution might actually be already here in that I inadvertently already did something along these lines in past experimentation with a variation of what I'm proposing below.
The basic idea is that two or more electrodes of sufficient rigidity and length, kept at a very close distance to each other with one end left free to oscillate and the other firmly kept in place, might be able to vibrate with the electrolytic processes occurring in the interelectrode gap and current applied.
Depending on electrode length, material, shape and current, the vibration frequency could be tuned to resonate possibly deeply into the ultrasonic range.
It might also be possible that even without intentional variations in the input voltage the electrodes might spontaneously reach a resonant regime, again depending on their parameters. If high current conditions will be spontaneously reached, the electrodes will tend to separate, which will lower the current and bring them back together by spring tension, and so on.
I haven't specifically tested this yet and I don't want to ruin the steel brackets in the photo just yet (besides, they're not perfectly flat and the holes are not expected to be helpful), but I'd like to read about possible faults in the above reasoning and if there are suggestions for reasonably reliable operation or tips for better performance that could be applied beforehand.
Other information:
- The electrodes are intended to run with an alkaline electrolyte and to not short circuit, although small-scale arcing could possibly occur.
- I expect that PWM DC input control would be desirable to more precisely tune the operating point.
- The plate in the middle is intended to be a "neutral" plate, although since the entire electrode rig will be immersed in the same electrolyte I'm not confident that it will work as expected.