[NewCandle] Stretching (and hiding) nanosquiddies

[Keith Nagel]

Hey Nick,

That was instructive, thanks. I think it's worth considering
that if you have H2 coming from the cathode and corrosion
at the anode, you've sort of got a good model of what's
happening when you just corrode a single piece of aluminum,
yes? Albeit with the important difference that the two
"sites" are now spatially distant and no longer driven by
the chemical environment.

Here's another consideration.

Have you added enough aluminum ion into the KI solution?
There would have been a substantial amount of Al ion in
the solution after corroding the metal, that's different
than your scaled down version.

Ultimately you need to address the carbon, where is
it coming from? Was it the residual oil from the foil?
Or, perhaps there were carbon fibers or residue already in
the aluminum metal. A quick search on the terms "aluminum
corrosion carbon" turned up a bunch of links, like this patent.

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=5494634

Some time back I spent a good deal of time trying to plate
aluminum; a waste of time really because it's so hard and
not worth the effort when you do succeed. If the squid are
being formed by deposition then it's pretty anomalous. If
they are already in the aluminum and are being etched free
that's a lot easier to explain. If so, you'll have a
hard time reproducing the effect with whatever methods you try.

I understand that you don't want to waste a lot of KI reproducing
the full experiment, but it sounds like that would be the
best way to determine if this was a "one off" or whether
there is a parameter or two yet unresolved in the reproductions.

Additionally, one could try using a carbon cathode, aluminum anode,
and see what that does. This would roughly model the condition
of carbon fibers being embedded in the aluminum under corrosion.

K.


-----Original Message-----
From: newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com
[mailto:newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com]On Behalf Of Nick Reiter
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 10:25 AM
To: New energy for the new world.
Subject: Re: [NewCandle] Stretching (and hiding) nanosquiddies



Hi Keith and all,

Tried a kitchen table experiment yesterday with some strips of foil in the
KI solution, and applied potential.

Total area of both + and - foil tabs was probably about 12 cm2.  I applied
4.5 volts from three AA batteries in series, and found that I was drawing a
current of about 90mA.

I let this run for about 10 minutes.  Within 2 or 3 minutes, I began to see
a slight yellow-green hue to the water.  The cathode was bubbling, the anode
seemed to be quiescent.  Neither surface appeared to darken, though, despite
the pea color of the electrolyte.

When I pulled both, and held the anode strip up to light, I found it to be
perforated with thousands of pinholes.  The cathode was unscathed.

I brought both strips with me to the lab and tossed them in the SEM.  No
squid forms anywhere.  The anode pinholes are irregular, typ 10 to 20
microns across, with an eroded looking nature as opposed to impact or EV
puncture style.  The cathode foil was scattered with some KI crystals but
was physically un-altered.

Just for giggles, even though no squid were formed, I ran some EDS on both
samples.  The foil surface of the anode, both near and away from holes
seemed to be pretty virgin, no surprises or "pop-up" elements at all.
However on the cathode, I found something somewhat interesting.... a
repeatable (between .3%at and .8%at) signal for Ni.  Interesting.  While Fe
seems to be part of the "virgin" composition and in many of the pixie
reactor runs is seemingly amplified, I have never seen Ni, either as part of
the incoming assay or an anomalous product.

Nevertheless, lack of squid may just mean the application of current needs
to be done at a lower level and for a long time period.

Maybe I can calculate from potassium, iodine, and aluminum what manner of
potentials would be possible, and then get some idea of what level these
"slow" or natural currents would be given surface area.

n


> As it is pretty easy to do, why not stick two small hunks
> of aluminum in
> your KI
> solution and juice it with enough current to see the
> discoloration
> of the solution, etc. Then perhaps it will be clearer what
> I
> am ham handedly driving at. It might help to look at the
> pic
> I just posted and consider that the tubes are identical
> except
> for the physical surface area of the three canodes. What a
> difference
> in the reaction rate! You've gone down by a factor of
> what, one thousand
> times?
>
> K.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NewCandle mailing list
> NewCandle at ipdiscover.com
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