First time poster

[glenn_aircooled]

Oh yeah , If you have the gear, try mixing a completely fresh batch of
27% KOH with the best distilled water you can get.
Put this in after rinsing the cells with distilled water.
If you have conditioned your cells with the previous batch - it may well require a change.
Dont throw away the old solution, store it in safe Plastic bottle for
conditioning the next unit.
Glenn.

[bcash4039]

[chemelec]

[Hybrid]

[chemelec]

Years Ago, When all alternators had External Regulators, it was Easy to Bypass the regulator, with a simple switch arrangement.
Guys would do it to run all kinds of things.

Now its somewhat harder to do, but by no means impossible and still practical.

However Be Aware that some alternators only use 50 Volt Diodes, while others use 200 volt ones.
And 110 volts out on a 50 volt diode is Not good.

[bcash4039]

Well I have taken every thing back to the bench and have been trying different things. Back with the generator hooked to the battery charger, and from a cold start. It ran as follows.

Volts 14.92 / Amps 14.4 / 1.27 LPM = 83% efficiency

After about an hour warm up

Volts 14.3 / Amps 22.4 / 2.06 LPM = 90.66 % efficiency

I believe that is not too bad for a auto filling cell.

Now going to the alternator from a cold start.

Volts 14.3 / Amps 5.4 / .46 LPM = 83.17% efficiency

The problems is that after running for about 6 hours it still doesn’t get to about 12 -14 amps. My theory is that I am not getting enough volts out of the alternator to push the amps though to get it to warm up and work properly. With 7 cells on the battery charger at 14.9 volts there is 2.13 volts across each cell. On the alternator at 14.3 volts there is 2.04 volts across the cell. Now given that I have current leakage due to the 1/8 inch hole in the side wall of each cell. I believe the I am on the border line of having enough volts to break the water apart but not enough to warm the solution to a good operating temperature.

So, I have to up the voltage across each cell just a little more. How to do that.

I know they make 15 and 16 volt alternators but what would that do to a 12 volt battery.

The other thing I was thinking about was going to a 6 cell generator. That would give me 2.38 volts across each cell, which would most likely be too much, but I could put a PWM in line to bring it back down to where its needs to be. As always I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and suggestions.

[kumaran]

[bcash4039]

kumaran

Your 7 cell unit is acting just like mine, as it is. Think we are going to have to go down to 6 cells. I sure hate taking the generator apart, but looks like that might be the only answer. We will eventually get it running.

[kumaran]

[chemelec]

[bcash4039]

I reduced the plates down to 7, six cells now, and with the alternator on a 2 horse electric motor turning 1250 rpms which is at idle on my car. The results are as follows.

At start up

12.88 volts 15.3 amps 1.14 LPM = 81.47% efficiency

After 30 mins.

12.7 volts 15.8 amps 1.20 LPM = 84.38% efficiency


I want to do a little more testing before putting it back on the car, but at cruising speed it should put out about 2 liters.

[huck]

[kumaran]