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/
