Electrolyzer v6 Project Page 2

I know, I know... my bubbler was low on water. I was only firing it up for the pictures so don't panic!

Here you can see the electrolyzer array in operation. The bubbler in this case is in the center but in production units I believe that I'll move it to the outside so that you can see it bubbling away. It will make the tubing runs more difficult and they won't be as elegant ...in fact they may be downright nasty come to think of it... but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I do plan on moving the bubbler to the outside.

I guess the only other thing I could do is keep the bubbler in the center but then raise it up above the rest of the tubes. This would allow you to monitor the water level since you would not be able to do this if it were at the same height as the other tubes. The other PVC tubes would obscure the view.

Doesn't it look cool to see all of those bubbles coming up?

That will be the one disappointing part of putting the bubbler in the middle even if I raise it up above the other cells to allow for better monitoring of the bubbler's water level.

Keep in mind that this was only running on 10 amps with 5 cells. With a 6th and maybe even a 7th cell at 20 or 30 amps you would have so many large bubbles in there it would be amazing!

There are several reasons for the low amperage in this case.

1. I didn't have the plates as close as they could have been.
2. The array has not been "exercised" very much. I should run it for a couple of days to properly break it in. Proper AC driven power supply in this case is a must which is my hold-up at this point.
3. Smooth plate surfaces. I have been told by Bob that heavily sanding my plate surfaces in a "cross hatch" pattern will really help to improve amperage flow tremendously. I will report my findings after I do some testing on that.

Here I was performing a production test just to see what my efficiency was. I never put a volt meter on my setup out here so I can only assume that my voltage (with the car running) was 14.4v. We know my amperage was 10 from viewing the other photos.

That means I was using 144 watts to power this unit. Not bad at all! -Just a bit more then a 100w light bulb.

I filled the 2 liter bottle with water and put the cap on. Then I filled a 5 gallon bucket with some water. I turned the bottle upside down and put the neck under the bucket's water line. I then removed the cap under the water and inserted the output line from the electrolyzer.

You want to do this test while your electrolyzer is warmed up and RUNNING already. I timed how long it took to fill the bottle up with gas which displaces the water inside of the bottle.

NOTE: At this point I realized just how dangerous this test was. I was holding in my bare hands, 2 full liters of HIGHLY Explosive gas by the time that puppy had filled the entire way!?!!?!?

I'm going to have to come up with a much "safer" way of testing my gas production. I guess a 1 liter bottle would at least be better since it's a lot less gas, but still dangerous.

At any rate, the bottle took 3 minutes 18 seconds to fill. That's 198 seconds per 2 liters of gas at 144 watts.

The liters per-minute calc is 2 / 198 * 60 = .61 liters per minute
The efficiency rating according to my spreadsheet that I made quite some time ago is 144 / .61 = 237.6

That spreadsheet again is: http://OUPower.com/Extras/ElectrolysisEfficiency.xls

So a rating of 237 is terrible. Something else is going on here. I didn't expect amazing efficiency but that is utterly terrible.

I may have had a number of things going wrong here:
1. I worked my ass off putting that syringe onto the end of the tubing so I didn't want to pull it off for this test. By leaving the syringe on I was increasing the gas flow resistance (due to the small syringe orifice) which raised the overall pressure on the system. This may have had a large impact on perceived gas production.
2. I may have had a leak somewhere. I need to do a pressure test to see if I'm getting leaking somewhere as that would also have a large impact on perceived gas production.

Here I am starting to fill the 2 liter bottle with gas. -Like I said I need a much safer way of testing this.

This method is GREAT for accuracy and it's free, but it's rather bad in the safety department!

If this is your only choice I recommend some things:

1. Never ever use glass as your container that you're filling
2. Use a smaller bottle. -It's not as accurate but it's safer!
3. Be sure that you have all electronics and flames (heat sources) far away from you.
4. Ground yourself before starting since static discharge from your skin or clothing is enough to ignite the gas.
5. Once you've filled the bottle up and taken note of your fill time, don't let go of what you're doing to write things down. Just gently remove your tube from the bottle and then slowly squeeze the bottle to remove the stored gas. This should let you squeeze out at least 1/2 of the gas in the bottle before you have to flip the bottle over to remove the rest of the gas.
6. Use a large bucket that will let you (if possible) flip the bottle over completely while under the water. Doing this would let you evacuate the entire contents of stored gas while under the water line in a controlled manner.

Yes I made absolutely certain that my bottle was fully cleared of explosive gasses before I ignited my torch tip. But for extra safety, I should have had the bottle further away.