Atom arc, The welder that once was.

[Cryptonic26]

Has anyone here ever seen one of these units in action? I'm planning to build one as soon as I can find some Tungsten rods to play with... Seems to be difficult to find around here.


I'm curious about the maths involved. I've read from several sources now, that 2H releases 422kj of energy when they bond to form H2. Is this correct?

Also interesting, how Atom-arc welders only require 300V@~10A to produce a steady stream of monoatomic hydrogen. I can only assume that the tungsten electrodes are consumed in the process, but I have not been able to have this verified for me.


Any information on the topic is welcome!

[Cryptonic26]

A bit of elaboration to justify putting this post here, instead of in the shop equipment forum:

There seems to be a bit of controvercy regarding the energy required to seperate H2, vs the energy released when re-bonding. I dont have enough knowledge on the atomic structure of H to draw a conclusion, so I figured this would be a good place to discuss.

[AbbaRue]

I'm not familiar with using an atom-arc welder to produce hydrogen.
Do you have a link that talks about it?
Anyway, I built the cold fuson system mentioned at:
http://jnaudin.free.fr/
This system uses a tungsten rod as the negative electrode and Stainless steel as the positive electrode. I built and tested it using 1/16 inch tungsten welding rods, and the rods erode away very quickly, about 2 inches in a half hour.
So even though it's supposed to put out 2.5 time the energy input, the cost of tungsten is more then the savings on energy.
I would think the atom-arc welder would have simular problems.
I purchased my tungstem rods at a locale BOC welding supply store.
The 1/16 inch rods were $1.65 canadian each and they wanted $6.00 each for the thicker 1/8 inch rods. I never tried the 1/8 inch rods out, maybe they would erode at a lesser rate.
I used a voltage doubler connected to the 120 volt mains, and it used about 4 amps. Hope this helped you a little.
Till later Harold

[Cryptonic26]

The welder doesnt produce hydrogen. It uses already produced hydrogen to generate a great ammount of heat. The mechanics are covered in the links below, but A brief outline of the process:

low pressure H2 is passed through a tungsten arc. The arc seperates The diatomic pair into monatomic hydrogen.

monatomic hydrogen is unstable, so the surface of the metal acts as a catylist, and the atoms rebond as H2, releasing heat. That is, hydrogen is NOT oxidized in this process, assuming an inert containment jet. (recycling of the Hydrogen is possible in theory)


This is a bit different than the process you reference, so I'm not sure that they compare 1:1. You may be right though.. I'll find out when I build the thing.

Thanks for the leads on finding my tungsten rods.

--

http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/AtomicH/AHW.html
(basic info)

http://www.specialwelds.com/atomic-hydrogen-welding.htm
(more info, has a nice pair of videos)

http://www.cheniere.org/misc/a_h%20reaction.htm
(a guy looking the process from an OU perspective)

[jjbeamish]

I was looking at my new Craftsman catalog at welding rods, I found one that said: "High tensile strength rod" "for low hydrogen"

not exactly on topic but hmmm...