Highly efficient electrolysis

[williamssteve]

Hi all,


It occurs to me that cat converters may be the perfect DIY water cracking devices for electrolysis.

All cat converters contain PLATINUM ( and some Rhodium etc ) but platinum is one of the best water cracking /dissociation metal catalysts.

What if we try getting a new cat, cutting it up and extracting the internal material, then slicing it up to make HHO plates in a HHO cell?

It seems to me that even allowing for the rhodium and other metals in the cat, the ammount of platinum should make this idea viable.

Also, these cats are designed for high gas flow, and therefore porous and tough - so it should create a large surface area for HHO generation and handle high temps.

Its so simple and easily sourced, I have no idea why I didnt think of it sooner....

Thoughts?

[Jehu]

Interesting idea.

Usually there are 2 types of cat converter, honeycomb and marbles. I'd say you would need the honeycomb style.

Now for the bit that might cause some problems.

While these biscuits do have PMs in them, the main thing they are made out of is some type of ceramic.

So the question is: Will the PMs in the biscuit be enough to make it conductive?

Also whattypeof electrolyte did you have in mind? I would say that you would be better off going with none and using distilled water as the platinum and palladium in the biscuit would turn it into a form of fuel cell.

Palladium loves to absorb hydrogen and we all know that platinum also is used in PEM fuel cells.


It's an interesting thought.


Here's another one along those lines.


Hard drive platters.


The platters in hard drives over the last 10 years have moved away from the old ferrious type and now havve a coating of either cobolt or,in the case of newer drives, platnium. The main component of the platters are usually aluminium or glass but the ones I've pulled apart have always been Al.

So that could be another route to go down. Only really just thought of that one as I was writing this post. Itmay have been tried before, I dont know, but it would be relitivly easy to assemble as theyare all uniform and balanced to spin at high RPMs.


Anyway, it's all food for thought.

[williamssteve]

Howdy Jehu,


The hard disk route sounds interesting. I'm looking at the Cats mainly because of the high temperature punishment they would suffer under high amperage loads. That said, where about in the hard drive is the platinum - the platters or the other bits?

That said, if a cat was ceramic, persumably the platinum would be exposed throughout the ceramic and hopefully anough to conduct electricity. Alternatively I could crush the ceramic to possibly extract the platinum manually, although have no idea if this is workable or not.

I guess there is a bit of suck it and see here....

I'd be trying water then KOH later if no joy.

I have also seen people using nickel or nickel/iron plates that have say 50% efficincy in conversion, whereas platinum is about 67% efficient.

I have also wondered why no one has tried nickel cell plates yet?
Nickel is the base stuff used in electroplating and cheap to obtain.

Cheers,

SW

[mos68x]

Don't forget that platinum is a recombining catalyst, nickel is the one for disassociation. That is why we can't use platinum for plugs in the engines and why they use it in fuel cell applications.
As far as nickel, I have been trying hard to find someone local that can do nickel plating for my SS304 plates and I'm not having any luck. I don't know how to do it myself otherwise I would, just to get it done and save myself some of the cost.
If anyone knows a company that can do it, or knows how to do it ourselves please let me know.

[williamssteve]

Howdy,

Any electroplater company uses nickel as the base coating they put on all metals BEFORE they put the final plating on e.g. chrome.

So...if you give them some SS plates, they can nickel coat them.

FWIW - I read about iron/nickel plates, so you *could* nickel coat normal steel plates ( cheaper too ) then scratch off the nickel coating ion spots so you have an iron-nickel interface. This iron-nickel interface apparently is highly eficient as well. Worth a try......

Let us know how you go.

Cheers

SW

[Jehu]

hey Will.

Yeah the platnium and/or cobolt is in a coating on the surface of the platters. From memory, the platnium ones are in the higher capacity drives, around the 20GBmark and up.

Even so the cobolt platters might be pretty good too as I remember a thread around here somewhere that had a link to a video that mentioned someone has come up with a new catalysis based out of cobolt.

As for crushing the cat monolith, only do that if you intend to go down the difficult route of extracting the PMs from it. I think you would definatly need to use nitric acid to disolve the PMs but even so, from what I recall, generally atm the values of the PMs in it are only worth about $25. So you probably wont have much usable metal after extracting and refining.

Probably best to stick with it in it's original form and slice it into wafers.

[chemelec]

[williamssteve]

Hi all

Chemelec - thanks for the DIY solution - interesting.
I had a conversation with a electroplater here and they said nickel is their base coating, so maybe they are behind the times, I'm not sure.

Either way, I was quoted about $40 to coat 10 mild steel plates each 10cm x 10cm both sides.....

I'm sort of excited about trying the nickel coating and if anyone has an old 20GB drive they can pull apart and try I'd be very interested int he results.

Cheers

SW.

[Jehu]

Will, I'm starting to get into PC scrapping so I am starting to get a few more hdds. I really should give it a go.

I think nickle is more popular nowadays for giving a base coat due to the fact it gives the final result more 'pop'. Ends up a lot brighter. It is also used as a base coat in gold plating of jewlery for the same reason.

I've also been looking at different parts in computers that might be nickle coated. The magnet brackets in a hdd seem to have a coating as well as the brackets the are attached to PCI cards.

[williamssteve]

Hi


Well thats excellent news Jehu - let me know what you find, I think we'd all be interested.

My interest in the iron/nickel combination is that I saw a company in the US that is using iron/nickel nanoparticles on a plate to get high efficincy electrolysis. Nanoparticles basically ( from my limited knowledge ) give a vastly increased surafce area for electrolysis.

As I'm but a humble back yard tinkerer, the best I can do is scuff up the plates with a belt sander to create micro grooves in the iron plate surface, then coat the plates with nickel ( via electroplating ), then use a file to take off the nickel from the "ridges" of the microgroves ( leaving the nickel in the "valleys" of the microgrooves ) - so we have both nickel and iron effectively in the same plate and both exposed to the electrolysis liquid.

I'm going to try straight nickel and straight iron and straight stainless and see what sort of output I get. Then I'll try th iron/nickel combo and post my results.

If anyone else has done this let me know and we can swap results.

Cheers,

Steve

[morehp]

you might want to give these guys a try...

http://www.caswellplating.com/

[mos68x]

[williamssteve]

I'm going the electroplater route, mainly because my plates are flat so its easy for them to do, but its a lot to do with cost as well.

I also think you can ask the electroplaters to keep it in the tank for a while to build up a good layer of nickel. Not beinga chemist, I assume that the nickel is eventually eroded away, however I'm not sure. But to be ont he safe side, a thicker coat will at least last longer.

Cheers,

SW.

[ismael_34]

hi friends

look at this link, there is the honeycomb, as you will see is the catalyst of an exhaust pipe of a car, containing palladium

you can also look at the image, and uploaded to the eletrolizador of Daniel Dingel, if I remember right it uses a catalyst des acomular the hydrogen cars


http://www.cientificosaficionados.com/reciclado/catatalizador% 20of% 20coche.htm



http://700yew.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pjMQ5PTvTUCAKTHGxV4WDwApgDiZS_LgqncM9pxB4OvJhqpkPShvsH0Ytr16XSZskGQoTCz-pZBKQmJZGd0Y_q_ruzZFEWRFG/catalizador.JPG


chauuu

[ismael_34]

hi friends

The link will ruin the translator, I leave here again


http://www.cientificosaficionados.com/reciclado/catatalizador%20de%20coche.htm



chauuu