On Sep 3, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Michel Jullian wrote:
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?
The immediate surface layers could be sintered Pd granules, but the back more granular layers could be any metal I think.
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?
I think so, but I can't find the paper. I think it was done by these folks:
http://www.qsinano.com/white_papers/Water%20Electrolysis%20April% 2007.pdf
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?
The idea is to get the flowing electrolyte to carry the evolved bubbles into and through the electrode holes, i.e. the equivalent to a mesh screen hole.
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?
Something you might want to think about regarding back loading at a somewhat lesser negative potential V<v<0 than the front loading negative potential V is the fact that most all CF experiments, due to electrolyte currents and resistances, produce a range of potentials across the cathode surfaces - especially the fluidized bed experiments using beads. Nothing repeatable resulted from these experiments AFAIK.
Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
