Oh I see, I thought you meant the porous structure supported a continuous (waterproof) Pd foil, in fact the mesh is made of Pd or is Pd plated right?
Independently of the cathode material, the idea of flowing electrolyte through a porous electrode in order to maximize the ratio of active (bubble free) area to total area seems good, all the more so that it also increases the total area! In fact both electrodes could be made thus, and one could pump electrolyte into the interelectrode gap so the anode surface would be bubble free too, which would further maximize achievable electrolysis current. Has this ever been tried BTW? Now with a palladium (or nickel) porous cathode, one could still implement the backloading scheme (second, higher voltage anode on cathode venting side) which would optimize my fusion hypothesis, the "overfaradaic" front bubbling would still be taken away by the flowing electrolyte wouldn't it? Mmmm I am afraid it wouldn't work, the backloaded hydrogen would find it easier to leak within the thickness of the mesh, in the no man's land between the front and the back, where no electrolysis pressure holds it inside the metal, don't you think? Michel ----- Original Message ----- From: Horace Heffner To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 8:16 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Towards verification of BG claims On Sep 3, 2007, at 9:05 AM, Michel Jullian wrote: >> http://mtaonline.net/~hheffner/Electrolyser.pdf > > "When electrolysing hydrogen, use can be made of a diffuse or > porous (essentially transparent to > hydrogen) but structurally strong material as a supporting > structure for a Pd surfaced cathode in > the centrifuge.... The hydrogen principally is driven into the > cathode interior by the high > operating pressure, but also by the electrolytic potential." > > Again, hydrogen pressure exerted by electrolysis at the palladium > surface being of the order of 10^26 atm (cf P&F's original paper > http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanelectroche.pdf ), > electrolysis would have in fact an astronomically larger effect on > hydrogen flow into the cathode than any operating pressure you > could achieve by centrifugation or otherwise. IOW a high operating > pressure would be quite useless, unless it has some other use in > your device? (haven't read the whole paper) I disagree. My focus here is on the *evolved* hydrogen bubbles. The fact the adsorbed gas moves through also is a bonus. The porous nature of the cathode material permits the bubbles to flow through the cathode material simply by the flow of electrolyte into or through the porous material. Imagine a rectangular prism shaped metal box with a fine mesh screen front for the electrode, and having a vent at the top. A fluid flow is set up through the screen. The flow is such that evolved bubbles then are pushed through the screen into the interior of the electrode and then out through the vent. In a centrifuge, the fluid flow is maintained by the displacement volume of the gas inside the hollow electrode. An alternative is to not use a centrifuge an pump the fluid through the cathode surface. The key is having a porous cathode surface. It is pretty nifty that the SPAWAR cells are porous at a nano-level. A very strong very porous sintered metal electrode could be co-deposited using the PdCl method used at SPAWAR to create an ideal cathode for hydrogen gas extraction via the electrode interior. It is also possible to co-deposit nickel or other hydride forming materials. I think such an electrode would best be made by sintering in steps, building layers, large granules first, toward the inside. Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
