Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
>> You might argue that "free energy" is always preferable to even
cheap oil, but the practical problem with the Gray device is low battery
life. The longest mentioned run was 200 hours. How many man-hours of
engineering would it take to increase that by an order of magnitude?
> Perhaps the trick is to use a mercury based battery with a fluid
electrode that is self healing?
Hmm... wonder if that is possible, even with a different geometry (flat
tray-like battery ??). But the failure mode of the lead-acid batteries
in the Gray device reportedly is on the (+) plate, not the lead plate.
The (+) plate is "supported lead-dioxide." This type of failure is
generally a burn-through. I am not sure if a proper self-healing
conductor exists with the proper level of oxidation, but it is an
intriguing possiblity.
It is interesting to note that Mallory Corp, very early-on supplied
"special" lead-dioxide plates for the batteries, indicating that this
company was not only heavily involved with Gray's efforts from the
earliest days, but was probably a silent partner: perhaps functioning as
'double agents', so to speak.
Can burn-through be avoided, or compensated, with better engineering?
... and is burn-through linked to a sudden decrease (or increase) in
conductivity?
Thicker plates were already being used but failed after 200 hours. This
sounds like the kind of typical problem that is solvable by throwing
x-number of hours of high-class engineering at the problem in Edisonian
fashion - as is done in the auto industry as a matter of daily practice.
BTW "Colossal Electric Conductivity" should be mentioned in this
regard, although it may depend exclusively on having enough silver
present. There is some silver in many lead ores, so who knows?
The reference is "Colossal Electric Conductivity in Ag–defect Ag5Pb2O6"
by Djurek, et. al. ... the citation:
http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0310011
In this paper, a "Byström–Evers compound" which is a ceramic composed of
silver and lead oxide which has been annealed under flow of electric
current - which results in "colossal electric conductivity" which they
define as > 10^(-9) ohm/cm or about 700% better than copper - rather
amazing. If enough silver were already in the lead dioxide, then
repeated cycling could form microfilaments of this compound which would
present channels for burn through.
In the simplest incarnation of this Byström–Evers compound, silver and
lead are plated in several thin layers onto a substrate and annealed in
air or O2 while passing an electric current through the material.
As for the EV Gray charging technique, and his use of discharge tubes,
please do not miss Ron Stiffler's excellent page on the xenon tube.
http://www.stifflerscientific.com/plasmapwr.asp
Methinks this kind of discharge device could be used instead of Gray's
design. Coincidentally, the voltage is either is identical.
Jones
