Hi Nick. Woke this morning to the ungodly sludge which is characteristic of NaCl/H20 electrolysis with steel....
So I cleaned things up a bit, and switched to NaOH. Yup, it's a whole lot better than NaCl, if by better you mean that it starts at a lower voltage. I see about 40V to start, and things get downright scary at 60V. The sodium lines are present, as they were in the NaCl experiment, no surprises there. Otherwise the effect is identical. I assert that any electrolyte can be made to do this, given enough power. It's worth pointing something out which I think we've ignored entirely in the other posts. The plasma we are seeing is burning hydrogen, with steam and electrolyte thrown in for good measure. You may notice that the amount of gas reduces quite a bit when the thing lights up, and that the plasma seems to "flow" up the wire to the surface of the electrolyte. Conditions at the surface must reach a point where sparking occurs to ignite the gas, how that happens is still a bit nebulous to me. Your problems with the thermocouple may be more understandable given that fact. In my old setup, anode and cathode were equal sized, and I worked the system up around the point where actual anode/cathode arcing would occur. In your setup, it is possible to study conditions at the cathode far before, and leading up to that point. Nice. I should also point out that although I am talking about a minimum voltage to ignite the plasma, the reality is more complex. Several factor come into play here. But it's safe to use that for a benchmark, it's a first order contributor to the effect. Now if you don't have anything else to try, I'll pour the NaOH solution down the bathtub drain in hopes of unclogging a stubborn hair ball lurking therein. K. -----Original Message----- From: Nick Reiter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 7:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: sam faile update and boundary electrolysis Thanks Keith, for looking at this again. I will have to pull out another supply - one that can take me up into the voltage range you speak of. But I know just the puppy - its lurking in my junk boxes right now. You ask if there is anything else I would like you to try for now - just one other idea comes to mind, if you get a few minutes. If you have some NaOH (Red Devil Lye seems to be darn near ACS grade), whip up a strong solution of it (5M?) and see how the effect compares to what I have seen. You should get a bright plasma sheath that has the strong lines of sodium. BTW - what color is the plasma with NaCl? Thanks very much for your time on this! Best, NR > With a weak solution of NaCl, at about 70 volts I > begin to see the > effect. When I switch to a strong solution, I see a > much > more robust effect. I can lower the voltage to about > 60V and still see the effect. NaCl is just out of > your > power supply voltage range; given that the currents > in your > microcathode experiment are so much more reasonable > I'm > sure you can find something with more voltage and > confirm > my experimental results. I'm guessing that a 100V > supply would be more than ample to light up all the > electrolytes you mention. > > So I can confirm that the effect is more pronounced > with > higher concentration AND that it works with NaCl. I > should > go back to my old notes and see if I just remembered > that > bit about concentration wrong or if there > was something about the other aspects of my setup > that made it behave differently. As I said > initially, > there's a lot going on here, and my old setup was > quite a bit more sophisticated than what we're > messing > with right now ( I think I spent 15 minutes to get > the results above ). The geometry of the > cathode, particularly the ratio of inactive area > ( electrolysis ) to active ( plasma ) is very > different, perhaps this is swamping out the inverse > relationship I was seeing to conductivity to > what we're seeing now. > > Before I throw away this now brown mess away, is > there anything > else you'd like me to try? > > K. > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
