I had an exciting afternoon. I replaced my control nickel with the 40 plus hour heat treated one that resembles an old penny now and began electrolysis.
The reading of voltage was a bit unusual after the first hour of operation so I replenished the water and added a little additional sodium carbonate to allow the system to reach equilibrium. Just before I started to make the standard readings after approximately an hour of additional electrolysis a friend called me on the telephone so I was diverted. We spoke for I would guess about half an hour until line noise convinced me to go upstairs to accept another call. Both of us changed telephones but the noise was still bad as we continued our conversation. Perhaps 30 minutes later we finished the call and I went back to make the measurements. My system was behaving very strange. I noticed that the bath had a thin white layer of material on its surface and a thick deposit was on the test nickel. This deposit was white and crystalline which I would guess is some type of carbonate. It was also very evident that a loud hissing noise was originating from the test system. I broke a hole through the thin layer covering the bath easily with my finger and noticed that it was very hot to the touch. The test nickel was also extremely hot. I decided to make the usual measurements and saw that the current was within normal range at 2.5 amps while the voltage had increased to 12.57 volts which is about 2 volts above typical. The liquid was reading 80 degrees C which is much higher than normal. With the measured delta C I would expect to have 86 watts of power being dissipated according to previous calibrations. The actual input was calculated as 31.425 watts. This will clearly be a significant measurement of excess power if it holds up to scrutiny. I suspect that the thin film on the surface of the electrolyte is acting as an insulator or some other issue is contributing to the strange results. I stirred up the electrolyte, cleaned off the nickel deposit and added additional water and sodium carbonate to see if the effect arises again. Regardless of whether or not this proves to be elusive, I had an interesting episode! By the way, I turned off the power to my test system and the line noise continued so I suspect the noise was generated by some other problem besides radiation emissions from my device (I sure hope so). Dave
