Idea for a simple vibrating electrolytic cell

Given that the previously observed radio noise seemed to be present mostly at very high frequencies, I tried doing a quick test today by forming and undoing a small temporary 5-turns air coil to the cathode wire while the cell was operating at about 11 amperes with the same arrangement as previously used, to check for any change.

Apparently when the coil was formed an enhancement in the FM radio noise produced followed, but it still retained its broadband (i.e. random) quality. In the video, the radio (off-screen, to the right) had its antenna extended to touch the jar near the anode and was set to the FM range at 108 MHz.

I'm not entirely not sure of what to make of this. I couldn't determine whether this was a real enhancement or just the result of a fortuitous alignment of the electromagnetic field generated with the antenna of the FM radio. For what it's worth, I tested it a few times under different positions and it seemed to be a reproducible effect.

Quote from Alan Smith

I have some here, the brittle nature and speed with which they corrode suggests they are plain carbon steel.

Yep, nothing fancy. By the way, in my case most of the corrosion occurred when I ran electrolysis with no electrolyte. Under the currently relatively strongly alkaline electrolyte very little corrosion and oxidation occurs. If temperatures could be kept in check, the electrodes could probably run at least for hours continuously, possibly days. Under my testing conditions I couldn't run previous ones in an acidic electrolyte for more than a few minutes without short-circuits occurring.

Quote from Director

I have been studying "exclusion zone water" and the whole Brown's Gas subject, and the following is the test I would like to do if I had the money or the space, which I don't. [...]

If it wasn't clear from the videos, I'm doing near zero-cost testing with no suitable space (but I don't have the guts to try igniting the gases produced by the cell here).

My low-cost experimentation on this line of "research" might end up here. I have just repeated the same test with a 12V VRLA battery temporarily borrowed from an uninterruptible power supply and I couldn't reproduce any previously observed noise through the AM/FM radio, although I could only get it to 7.5A whereas under the same conditions 10.5A would be generated from the switching 12V DC power supply.

My conclusion is that the noise generated mostly comes from (or is induced by) the power supply. Still, it's not clear to me why it seems to only occur with narrow-gap electrolysis (writing it down for the record).

Alan Smith

I was aware in general terms of the mode of operation of switching power supplies, but I assumed the signal would be stable enough to not show as a strongly measurable effect and it turns out that I was wrong.

Results vary, but searching detailed reviews on the Internet it seems this power supply (Corsair HX520W, 1st-gen model) might have up to a 28 mV peak-to-peak ripple on the 12V line at maximum load. From the most high-resolution oscilloscope traces of the signal that I could find I think my model is designed to run at 150 kHz (6 cycles in 40 µs).

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article692-page4.html

http://www.jonnyguru.com/blog/…520w-520w-power-supply/2/

https://www.overclockersclub.c…iews/corsair_hx520w/5.htm

The bottom line is that this relatively small voltage ripple completely shadows any effect I thought would be caused by the electrolytic processes in the closely-spaced electrode gap as the 12V DC battery test demonstrated. Perhaps with a very sensitive radio or an actual oscilloscope this could have been observed to a very limited extent even with it.

In any case, the initial idea could still be valid in that by deliberately pulsating input power as to obtain oscillations of the maximum possible amplitude at the highest possible current, macroscopic vibrations might occur: this often partially shows in consumer electronics as the dreaded "coil whine" effect. And the closer to an ideal square wave the carrier waveform is, the higher the number of harmonics generated (infinite in the case of ideal pulsed DC or square waves).

Power supply designers generally try to reduce the effect, not maximize it.

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EDIT 2019-06-23 #1: I tried wrapping my head around the software FEMM (Finite Element Method Magnetics) to calculate the force between two sheet/bar conductors, which is a slightly different condition than round conductors.

From this theoretical analysis I found that the force between 18mm wide, 80mm long, 0.5mm thick conductors carrying an opposing current flow of 15A and in the ideal case of 0.15mm separation will be very small, and therefore that the underlying idea of this thread might not work as intended, at least under the present conditions (it might need much larger sheet electrodes and a significantly larger current). Given these results, it feels almost like I'm trying to invent a square wheel.

One interesting finding however is that ferromagnetic conductors will produce a stronger magnetic force against/towards each other, which should in retrospect not be unexpected but usually this is not mentioned when looking up basic explanations of the subject which are intended for the most common case of non-magnetic conductors.

Here is the integrated Lorentz force calculated on one electrode at 0 Hz, using Steel 1020 (0.008897 N on the x axis):

Here is the integrated Lorentz force calculated using copper (0.0005632 N on the x axis):

I took hints for setting up the calculation from the paper ELECTRODYNAMIC FORCES BETWEEN TWO DC BUSBARS DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS CONDUCTORS by Petrescu&Petrescu (e.g. Fig 10).

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EDIT 2019-06-24: for the record, even though it does not look like anything particularly unusual is occurring according to the above findings, I did a few more quick tests today with the same electrode arrangement and electrolyte (after refilling some of the lost water with more tap water) and here are some of the observations.

• By applying manually power impulsively at a low rate an interesting gas bubble wave phenomenon can be observed on the back surface of the electrodes
  • Every time this is performed for a brief moment the applied current gets a small 10-15% boost from the clamp meter. This is also audible from the AM/FM radio from a larger "attack" in the sound produced.
• By temporarily removing one of the mica spacers from the gap (originally for reducing the surface area where electrolysis occurs) I could easily get current to 25A and more, but this did not seem to be particularly helpful in producing more radio noise.
  • It could be because it did not increase the "mechanical lever" compared to performing electrolysis just at the tip of the electrodes
• Making the assembly more rigid by holding it at various lengths with an insulated clip seems to decrease slightly current applied and make the radio noise produced not just lower but also less chaotic
  • However if the clip is put closer to the tip of the electrodes, forcing the gap to a smaller size, the reaction and radio noise become more vigorous, but also more prone to short-circuiting from the electrodes touching each other. When this happens an acoustic rushing sound possibly due to water boiling from the heat can be heard just before current skyrockets above 40A, causing an overload warning from the clamp meter in its measuring range.
• Upon close observation it seems that gas production from electrolysis already makes visibly vibrate the electrodes at the tip.
  • Either this or the gas bubbles produced distort the view.
  • If it's a visible vibration, this might overwhelm any magnetically induced motion from the current flow, but on the other hand, it might itself induce electromagnetic emission.
    • A counter argument to this however could be that the previous battery test should have then caused radio noise, but it didn't (or at least none was observed with the radio I have at disposal).
• Earlier I tried applying the previously made 100-turn inductor to the cathode wire, but it wasn't useful in producing more or different radio noise.
  • It might have a too large inductance to couple with the electrode assembly efficiently
  • The inductor itself was a considerable source of electromagnetic noise
  • It made current decrease to about 6.5A
• All short-circuit events I had from inadvertently making the electrodes touch were fully recoverable and non-destructive.

I was almost considering getting one of those cheap PWM DC motor controllers that can be easily found on online stores (see image for an example), but then I realized that they would only allow to adjust the duty cycle.

lenr-forum.com/attachment/8789/

Instead, I'd like to be able to adjust duty cycle and frequency all the way up to about that of the power supply (150 kHz). Any suggestion that doesn't involve building one from scratch from discrete components and an Arduino or something? (although it could be an interesting project on its own, if anything for educational purposes).

I still have a loose idea/suspicion that with narrow gap electrolysis and flexible electrodes, if not due to the electromagnetic interaction between them, at least the gases produced may be able to induce vibrations at the frequency of the input power applied to the electrodes at least up to a certain extent, depending on their physical parameters.

Of course one might wonder if this is really worth the effort when an ultrasonic transducer (+controller) could be used to achieve about the same effect.

Alan Smith

Yep, it is certainly going to be a complex system to tune and characterize.

The basic driver of this was trying to find a link between the anomalous effects reported in water cavitation systems in LENR (and LENR-like) experiments and the water electrolyzers in the "HHO" field where the best claimed results have often been from narrow-gap electrolysis and/or the application of "special frequencies" to the electrodes. The recent revival of Ohmasa's mechanical water agitator/cavitator and his special gas production system sparked some more interest in trying out a few ideas at low cost. However if I will start adding equipment, controllers and so on, it's not going to be low-cost nor simple anymore, and I'm not really that interested in producing and using the gas.

Indeed in retrospect simply attempting to induce energetic (emphasis on energetic) electric discharges in water as with Parkhomov's "woodpecker" is already going to cause cavitation, decompose some of the water and induce other large scale effects, so pursuing this speculative electrolysis path further will probably not be that interesting in comparison. The tricky part will be doing that safely and reliably.

However any future effort towards specifically achieving similar results and ignore electrolysis will be for a different thread.

Curbina

I did not know about it, thanks. From a very quick read of the paper you uploaded it looks like the authors used standard frequencies (2.45 GHz and 13.56 MHz are common for respectively microwave and RF generators). However I seem to understand that the polarization or concentration of the radiation field is important for achieving the effects they describe. So my guess (which could be wrong) is that if a sufficient local energy concentration can be attained by other methods (e.g. cavitation, which narrow-gap electrolysis as hypothesized in this thread might have done under certain conditions), similar observations could possibly be made.

Curbina

It might be simpler to build once done and characterized but I think toying with relatively high-power RF generators and tuning their resonating cavities in the research phase is not really something that just anybody can do safely and efficiently. I'm wondering myself if I should really be playing with potentially likely lethal combinations of current-voltage as in the Parkhomov/woodpecker test attempt in the other thread I opened today (comments about that and the possibly related Santilli research there please).