Please do, let me once again, offer my apologies for not responding more
promptly. I have been working in electrochemical systems for over thirty
years now, and have come in some ways, to detest the heavy mechanics
involved with the systems that I see, of both Myers and Horvath. Let me be
fair, they both work but at the cost of simplicity. In the welders that
Brown and in many of my designs we shied away from noble or exotic metals
in their construction. One, there are expensive to buy, and two, they are
hard to find. In the case of the welders made in Australia we chose simple
mild steel. The efficiency losses of some 5%, we feel were a good trade
off, fore they were easy to maintain, easy to replace, and a cost effective
substitution of conventional materials. With a bit higher cost, normal
stainless steel will recover about half of the lost efficiencies over mild
steel. Actually, some day I hope to develop a graphite/carbon plate system,
money providing.
In the Horvath system he violates one of the principles of electrolyses,
that of plate spacing or "Proximity".
I may as well give you a project that easily makes this point of design,
clear. I do hope you will take these suggested experiments seriously and
try them out so that you see for your self, the validity of my claims.
Also, If I can get you on the same page, more or less, we can share more
clearly, new or more complex ideas, as we then have a common frame of
reference.
You will need:
Table salt
A, 6 Volt battery, like the kind for a lantern
A few feet of wire
A plastic bowl of some depth
And two thin strips of sheet metal
Solder a good connection of wire to each of the plates or strips of sheet
metal. Attach the other end of the wires to the poles of the battery, one
positive, one negative. Fill the bowl with normal tape water, add a
teaspoon or so of salt, and dip the electrodes into the water. Now move
them back and forth, bringing them closer or farther apart, with the flat
sides oriented to face each other. You will see that if you move them more
than a half an inch from each other, the bubbling at the plates, stops or
slows down greatly. At about, 3/8 inch, to about 1/4 inch, the production
is at about 90% of that that can be expected by closer spacing. Although
you can move the plated closer together, you run the risk of shorting out
the system.
Play around a bit, turn one plate perpendicular to the other. You will see
that only the lead edge, closest to the flat plate, generates a
concentration. If you have a hart time seeing the quantity of action at the
plates, try 12 volts, or 18 volts. Voltage can and does compensate for
wider plate spacing, but at a high cost in efficiency. Point of safety,
Table salt will emit chlorine gas when electrolyzed so don't put you face
right over the test. This is a good thing when you want to commercially
electrolyze seawater, because you can chill and capture the clarion gas,
and sell it.
Now think back the scalloped plates of the in the Horvath cell. Where would
the greatest efficiencies be, At the edges. In an effort to maintain
matching plate area he sacrifices efficiencies by ignoring the lessons of
plate proximity.
In both Myers work and Horvath there are counting on a long standing
theory, of a pulsed power supply.
WHY?
The principle that they are seeking is what is called the "coasting ion"
theory, proposed at around the turn of the century.
The theory goes something like this. At the atomic level where
electrolyses takes place, the distances that an ionized particle must
travel to reach the other palate is relatively, like us going from here to
the sun. Great relative distances must be crossed, plate to plate. The idea
of pulsing the current comes in when you imagine an unstable water
molecule, loosing the oxygen atom at one plate, then the hydrogen racing
back through the vast space to then be released at the opposite pole. Once
destabilized, and with a small sustaining charge, the atoms should just
coast toward the polar opposite, so why push them harder with higher
voltages than is needed. Push and coast, push and coast. Pulsed voltages is
then supposed to offer higher advantages of efficiencies.
If this is true then Horvath violates any hope of greater efficiencies by
having the varied plate spacing involved in the concave or scalloped, plate
face. He just asked the ionized material to cross ten light years of space
rather than one.
Myers designs violate another prime principle, that of matching plate area.
In his design, he has concentric sleeves in electrolyte. If he was doing
his work right, he will see that matching plate areas are important. For
one reason or another, matching plate size is important. Horvath
understood, and is why he scalloped his interior plate in the first place.
You can test this also by trying deferring size plates in your little test
tub.
Next, is an issue of plate faces, try making up some plates of various
surfacing. Rough one with sand paper, make one set smooth with fine Emory
Cloth, and polish another set with fine polishing compound. Clean each with
alcohol and vinegar, then test each set. You should see that the smooth
plates let the bubbles go easier, that way making room for more direct
contact.
We used heavy, welding transformer cores, for our power supplies, with
rectified output to get the DC current, and we could not understand how,
when we took prototypes from the bench top, to the in chaise mounted
design, how we were getting about 1/3 better efficiencies. Not until we
placed our hand on the heavily vibrating enclosure. We were just agitating
the plates so that the bubbles were bounced off the surface sooner, thus
making available, more surface area, sooner. We were just breaking down
the capillary effect of the bubbles sticking to the plate face. Some way
to get find a 30% breakthrough in efficiencies?
I hope this gives you some answers about the basics of electrolyses.
More to follow.
All the best
TR Knudtson
>I also studied the following Horvath U.S. Patent 3,980,053 available on the
>IBM
>patent server:
>
>
>http://www.patents.ibm.com/cgi-bin/viewpat.cmd/3980053
>
>This provides a very detailed, on demand, water splitting method. It seems
>to be
>based on Stanley Meyers work and describes in great detail cracking
>circuitry, steel nickle coated electrodes etc. Use of magnetism, resonance
>and hydrogen/oxygen filtering membranes are all incorporated and is worth
>a study. So far it seems to be the most complete treatment, for building a
>system, on the subject that I have seen but is complex.
>