BIG Bubbles=Oxygen +VE, Small Bubbles=Hydrogen -VE right?

[dizzy]

Hi Guys...have I got this right?? the H comes off the -VE plate(s) and are the small bubbles and the opposite for the O??...

I have just built a version of Smacks Booster and as I was testing it before putting it in the vehicle I decided to revers the polarity, ie. I put +VE to the centre plates and -VE to the outside plates, well it appeared that the gas production increased significantly BUT this may have been an increase in O and not H, which presumably is not what is needed, any comments on this??...

I am using KOH at 1.25% solution by weight in distilled water, I seem to recall that when I asked the question about % solutions earlier, someone said that they used 26%, is this a bit over the top?? and when you use a 'stronger' solution do you get more gas??...

I also initially ran it direct from the battery at about 11.8v, when I switched to running the + cable from the back of the alternator at about 13v the amount of gas generated seemed to increase significantly, so is there an easy way to run the generator at, say, 18 or 24v from a normal auto system?? as I presume this will make huge amounts of gas???...

Getting there, slow but sure!!!...thanx in advance for all your help...kind regards dizzy

[jpshydro]

Hi Dizzy,

I will try give some info regarding your questions:

I have two car batteries and a battery charger to test my generators. The batteries run at 11.6 to 11.8 volts and the charger when I set it at 12 volts will actually go a little higher than 12 volts not sure why.

The generally the more electrolyte you put in a generator the more amps it pulls. Also if you read the info on smack's website when you first start he says you will get about 1.2 liters per minute and it will go up to 1.7 liters the smacks cell I built has only gotten to about 1.4 liters but I used 2 less plates than he did which should not really matter. If you put a little more electrolyte in you can get more gas but you need to be careful it doesn't go up to 20 - 30 amps or more and get up to 150 to 200 degrees or higher, thats what happened to me in my test with about 1% solution of sodium hydroxide, this can also happen if you increase the volts and decrease the % of electrolyte found that using my battery charger.

Some funny things happen also. I have a four generator cells wired in series I just built. When I started them up on my battery they were drawing about 2 volts each and .2 of an amp each you could just barely see bubbles: after about 15 minutes it was like somebody flipped a switch and they each started generating 3 volts and about 3 amps which is what I expected them to do all along. I guess they just needed a warm up and they really started producing gas using about the same % solution as you had except it was Sodium Hydroxide. After the first time they started producing at this rate when I started them up.

I don't know if you can boost the volts, also not sure that would really do you any good because the amps would probably go down and you would have the same amount of watts = voltage X amps. Your alternator generates more power than your battery at a higher voltage and probably resulted in a higher amperage being pulled by your generator.

Anyway thats my story hope it helps a little,

[mrgalleria]

Aloha,
Yes, you can beef up the alternator. Bypass the regulator, and voltage will vary by rpm. Careful, voltage can exceed 120 volts. Google alternator secrets. And see Alaskastars project folder for alt mods. You can also put lower voltage into the brushes, and see the alt. mod in my project folder for a simple pulse method, it works.
Bill

[chemelec]

[huck]

[dizzy]

Hi Guys...firstly thanx everyone, the haze is starting to clear although the thot plickens!!!...the question of reversing the polarity, as in, basically swapping the -VE and +VE over so that the -VE is now connected to the outside plates - a version of the Smack Booster, similar but not the same - seems to produce more gas, any ideas why and perhaps more importantly, what kind of 'gas', as in, H or O???...

[huck]

without seeing your plate distribution it's hard to say...

because of it seems the 'smacks' design uses voltage induction(i think is the phrase) where-by from right to left(from smacks design pics) and left to right... the voltage DECREASES toward the center...
and you would be reversing that..

good bad or otherwise i don't know...

[hypersoniq]

-VE=Cathode=H bubbles
+VE=Anode=O bubbles

Whichever plate arangement has your negative lead connected is the one producing H, If you reverse it then the other set of plates is now producing H. If you have more surface area on one set of plates than the other, that could account for more bubbles when reversing polarity.

When I was doing tabletop intro experiments I had one setup that just produced H because the anode was just turning dark and not releasing any O.

I wonder if there is a formula that can be used to calculate the distribution of volts/amps across the surface area of the plates so you would know what effect surface area has on producing gas...