One component Meyer circuit?

[ScottLea]

Hi all,
I stumbled across a simple, single component, way of approximating the Meyer HHO production circuit.

I'm sure y'all have see or done this, so maybe it's old hat. If not let's see at least what you think.

I was surprised to see the complexity of the Meyer circuit, when after goofing around I got extremely similar results with one component. I thought I'd share it with y'all. I do not have pictures, because once I lost interest, thinking it wasn't anything special (which may still be the case), I torn it down and gave away most of the tubes etc to other people for their prototypes.

Summary:
I used 110VAC (house hold current), put through a 500v rated full bridge rectifier, wired to a bundle of 7 electrolyzer units (cathode and anode pairs).

Dunked it in 2 liter soda-pop water bottle, I plugged it into an outlet, and expected it to short out (like a hair dryer dropped into a bath tub) and blow the breaker. Well, it didn't short out! Instead, tons of foggy/tiny-bubbling gases arose from the tubes. An in-line amp-meter showed .25 amps, that's approx 30 watts. I just wanted to see a few bubbles, but it was foaming like a rabid dog! Very much like the Stan Meyer videos -- I had a "OMG, no way" moment.

Eventually the water became a beautiful bronze color just like other experimenters seen. Done -- There it was, single component electrolyzer.


Building it: Each electrolyzer consists of a SS rod each inside a SS tube held in place with bits of vinyl hose. Each tube 1/2" in-dia 6" long and respective rod 1/4" dia 1" longer (7") to avoid shorts (you'll why if you build it). Resin coated magnetic wire, stripped at one end and wrapped single layer like a solenoid coil for 1" at the top of each rod and tube. Wired to all together, minding the polarity(!) to the DC output side of the rectifier. I did coils because I didn't want to hassle with soldering a wire to to a Stainless Steel surface. What a pain and it wouldn't probably hold. So I wired wrapped it, just happened to be a coil. Note: Each electrolyzer in the bundle (7 total) is spaced with bits of vinyl hose, same as used on the cathode and anode spacers. I used epoxy to keep all the spacers in place and hold the bundle together.

Testing it:
Then just for giggles, I removed the rectifier and went stranight AC. It didn't do *anything*, no bubbles, didn't flip a breaker. Yet voltmeter showed current though (I forget how much). Correct as expected.

How does it work?! I was trying see if I could make any bubbles "at all". I thought I read from Meyer's patent, that a waveform ranging from 0 to about 100vdc in a stair stepping fashion followed by a sudden drop and then a proportionally short time-gap at 0 vdc was needed to elongate and snap the molecules apart into base gasses. Complex circuit for sure. I thought about 555's and uCPUs, voltage amplifiers, switchers etc.. But since I wanted only a few bubbles at first, I saw no need to do a complex circuit.

Well, readily available household current was about the same range... A rectifier would make it DC... But the wave form needed a 0 vdc gap, this was a problem. As it turned out the rectifier provides a bit of a gap in stability affecting the timing a tiny bit, possibly due to heat loss in the diodes or cut off voltages, maybe just a cheap component, whatever(!), the spec diagrams showed a gap in stability. Again, I just wanted to see at least a few bubbles. But when I fired it up... (see above).

During the gap, I'm wondering of the discharge of the coils caused a back EMF ringing effect that may have increased performance in the gas output. I could see the ringing on my Textronix DPO O-scope.

That's where I stopped. Next I should measure the output volume of gasses and compare to other people's findings at 30 watts -- I'm betting it's pretty close from just seeing the videos.

What if not?
Hmm, if a single component can perform pretty close to the Meyer design than what does that say about the more complex Meyer circuit? Could it mean I've found something great (too), is the Meyer circuit is overkill, or is the entire method crap?(!)... What am I missing here?

But what if?
Improvements -- I've thought about many things I'd try. Every enclosed volume (cave, pipe organ etc) has a "harmonic volume". If the back EMF ringing could match that volume's harmonic? Then gas production might increase as the bubbles would shake off faster due to disruption in the gas surface tension?

If there is enough interest, or if the findings do not make sense, then I'll build it again, get pictures and video and do some measuring of output.

--ScottLea

[chemelec]

Just putting a Full wave Bridge onto an AC Line, Does NOT Produce much DC Current. It is Still full of AC Ripple.
That is why you didn't draw much Current, according to your DC Amp-Meter.
If you also used an AC Amp-Meter, You would have seen it was also Drawing AC Power.

You Need the Bridge Rectifier, as well as a Good, High Capacitance Filter Capacitor to get good Rectified DC power.
With 110 VAC in and Proper Filtering you will get about 155 VDC out.

Also I really doubt your coils had any effect. There Inductance would be Too low, considering a Frequency of 60Hz.

[ScottLea]

[chemelec]