Jason and Katie wrote:
>If I'm reading this patent paper right, the reaction can happen at less than
>500mA using the methoxide catalyst as an electrolyte, but you need more than
>800 volts to create the field strength necessary for a proper conversion. is
>this correct?
>
Unless I missed something the paper says you do not need methoxide
catalyst. The reaction is supposed to involve a renewable oil and an
alcohol and and electric current.
>could someone read the paper and tell me if i'm nuts? you can
>make ~12 amps with a 1500W AC generator, and even considering the draw
>nessecary for conversion from AC to DC there would be PLENTY left for the
>reaction, almost 9 amps.
>
Well this is a little hasty. Your generator produces what voltage?
Conidering ohm's law you are only going to get as much current flowing
as the voltage/resistance will allow. Dry oil is a dielectric, in other
words it has high resistivity. So does alcohol if it is anhydrous. For
instance I can suspend two copper rods in a mixture of oil and methanol
at a distance of 5 milimeters separation between the parallel surfaces
and apply 2000 vdc and get virtually no current. You will need a very
special generator to do this job. I have constructed a power supply
with a high voltage transformer and a 'stack' which is a chain of HV
diodes and capacitors which can deliver upwards of 300 mA at several
kilovolts for this purpose. I have a background in maintaining plasma
equipment and particle accelerators which run up into the hundreds of
kilovolts DC and I would suggest that unless you are experienced with
high voltage, even if you are and electronics technician you should
think twice ( or ten times) before you go casually fiddling with HV
stuff. Remember a couple of joules can be lethal and with DC you don't
get a chance to let go 60 times every second like you do with AC!
>i fail to see the reason why more people haven't
>been looking into this process, i am certainly going to try it. anyone have
>an idea if a switching or linear supply would be better?
>
>
The supply they used in the abstract sounds like a regulated DC supply
with pulse capability and isolated output. References to ground loops
messing up the regulation circuitry tells me this. Initially I assumed
this choice of supply was a poor one and that an unregulated supply
would be less constraining. Initial test results as posted earlier
indicated that the oil/alcohol mixture could withstand much higher field
strengths than one would gather from reading the abstract - on the order
of 650 V/mm before dielectric breakdown occured. No sign of hydrogen
bubbles was seen at field strengths below breakdown. Of course plenty
of bubbles are in evidence in the presence of an submerged arc but these
are most likely vaporised oil. The abstract does say that conditions at
the anode during reaction involve temperatures in the range of 1600 deg.
C. and are strongly oxidizing which makes me wonder now if the regulated
supply was actually sustaining and regulating an arc and this is how the
reaction is supposed to proceed?? This is a big question mark at the
present time. Once ionization happens all bets are off as far as
thinking about how liquid reactions normally take place. Plasma
reactions can account for many weird and wonderful pairings of ionic
species depending on energy and ionization levels and the field is
really not that well understood at the practical level, even for vacuum
systems where the majority of the knowledge was derived. My simple
supply is not capable of regulating under arc conditions so I have
reached a temporary impass. I also find it hard to know if any reaction
has taken place during some of the experiments I have done since there
is no visual indication to be expected as with the conventional BD
process, i.e. no glycerine precipitate!
Regards
Joe
_______________________________________________
Biofuel mailing list
Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages):
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
