Thought I'd make one. I've been researching two battery cell types over the winter. One which I'll just refer to as a Clarke cell, and the other, a Karpen cell. Karpen is famous for making a battery that's been running for 70 years straight with no signs of corrosion on it. I tracked his patents down and got them translated into english. Guy was nice enough to write a couple of his recipies down and make something that's simpler for somebody who can't afford gold or platinum. He made some big claims due to not having all the info at the time and the scientific community laughed him off as a quack.

Clarke's cell is brass and aluminum sitting in moving or heated water. It's considered a thermo-electric cell. I combined it with Karpen's to see what fuckery I can get up to. I made three cells a month ago. A fat one with sodium carbonate in water that was sealed off. A small one that was concentrated, but could breathe, and one with just plain water that was sealed off.

Here's the two altered ones at the start of the month followed by at the end of the month.




In the large on the aluminum is getting hit by the carbonate, and in the small one the brass is tarnished big time. The big one seems more stable in its corrosion, and sits at 0.5 volts. The small one sits at 1.3 volts.



This is the third one with no alterations but water and an air seal after a month. Hydrogen gas is stuck above the water and it shows no signs of corrosion at all. It demonstrates interesting behavior. On any given day it sits at 0.3 - 0.6 volts. In hindsight I think it's due to the temperature around it. It regenerates its amperage about a minute after you disconnect it from a circuit.

It's not super strong, but if I got it right, it won't decay because everything is sitting in a state of equilibrium and reactions have been stopped. Karpen's cell is suspected to be a thermal cell as well, but it's not known for sure since his can't be taken apart.

It's also easy to make, so some time after a bit more testing I'll see if I can rig more of these up and stack some voltage. I'm also building a generator. I'll drop that abomination in here as I go as well just in case you guys are interested later.

You're gonna be getting the trace uranium out of fire detectors for a backyard reactor in no time.

You're already too late, I've slipped that far for test purposes. It's not going to be a good avenue because of what I'd need to make things work. I'd honestly have faster luck bombarding carbon with ion beams and making it carbon 14. That or raiding a nuclear waste disposal site. I think the closest I'll get is the big brain ape make wheel spin fast with magnets and copper coils.

If I could build a small reactor without getting myself arrested I would, but the goal here is simplicity since I'm building a system I intend to have operating past my death in order to help somebody else out. They aren't tech minded and able to maintain it, so the only option is something that outlasts a person.

We're going big boys. Found this fucker in the metal scrapyard today. That's my generator wheel.

Rigged this up a few days ago. 12 volts depending on how it feels. First stab at feeding it into an inverter to see if I could light it at all. No success given that it behaves a bit differently from usual batteries.

I'm likely going to say fuck it and convert these into charcoal cells, since I rigged one up a few weeks ago and its output is pretty phenomenal for the size of materials. The charcoal will eat both of my electrodes, but being that this is a test and that I need to move my ass on this before winter hits again, I won't get anywhere if I don't try things and take some losses.

Generator project hit a snag. The magnets I got for it work fine, but I'll need hundreds of them to line the wheel, which amounts to thousands of dollars I don't have. So I'll have to downscale things to work with what I've got.

Here's the infernal binding of salvaged garbage I managed to make today. I think it warrants a todd howard seal of approval for just working.

Nothing major, just a curve ball. I don't think I can make my generator run for the same amount of time as a grandfather clock because of speed. Grandfather clock mechanisms run as long as they do because they don't need to run fast.

So clearly, the answer to build a self winding pendulum. At first glance, I don't think this crude little sketch violates any laws of physics. As the pendulum arcs outwards, it'll spend some of its energy on pushing against the secondary top spool, winding the weight back up partially.

I could be totally wrong here, but at worst, it slows the fall of weight partially so that I get more run time on things. Self winding clocks and watches already exist, but their blueprints are for lack of a better word, impossible to find.

So I guess my dumb ass has to figure it out without help.

Here's today's fuckery. I had the idea of using clothesline as a cable for pulleys since it can't be broken by hand and it's built to work with a little tension. It's got the benefit of being industrial strength but stupid cheap. The cable works, but not exactly as I intended. I failed to take into account how the clips holding it together act under pressure when rolling. They flexed slightly. So I can't spin those two roller bars without adding tension.

 The plan is bolt a piece of wood where the stick is, fit a small wheel into it, and tie a weight to it to act as a tensioner for the cable. After that, all I need to do is find a way to rig the bike wheel to the upper roller bar, and fit another pulley to make the falling weight do its thing. Spinning this by hand with the cable, I can get 40 volts DC or AC, and somewhere above 500 milliamps since my meter can't read that high.

 As is, if I stuck a falling weight to it now, I could charge batteries and run small appliances and tools, and light up a few LED strings. Getting there.

Quote from: E on July 25, 2024, 08:08:15 PM

It looks like you're definitely getting there. I say this without a trace of irony: thank you for taking the time to update us with this thread. I can't say I've read all the posts, but I've read this one, and I'll make the effort to catch up when Sam goes to sleep tonight. I hope you have a fantastic Friday morning <3

Don't worry about reading. If I was going to tell you to read anything, I'd say to wait until I have concrete results.

The condensed version of what I've learned so far is that 90% of electric motors can be used as generators if they are spun rather than having power put into them. All electric motors are generators, and all  electric generators are motors.

Two pieces of metal can be used in a lot of different ways to make basic batteries strong enough to light small electrical things. The simplest is water based, but if you want something more stable, throw the metal into dirt and water it like a houseplant every now and again. If you want to get fancy, you can align the electrodes with the Earth's telluric magnetic currents and they'll pick up on it, giving a boost.

I drop it all off here just in case anybody's interested, but my long term goal is learning enough about this shit to start building something quality enough to sell. I'm pretty sure if I can make anything with a reasonable output gravity powered that can run for a day on a windup, it would kill as a salespiece.  But I don't have to just sell something. This shit could help somebody out one day if we end up in a shit situation like downed power grids long term and cut off gas pumps.

I made these cells up today finally after getting the steel I needed. 10 volts of power. I know they should be much higher but forgot to take into account that cells like these have very high internal impedance which dunks their possible voltage, and I'm only using water as an electrolyte.

But I'm willing to settle for ten volts. These were easy to make, and they activate with so much as just a spray bottle. The only thing I'm worried about is if their internal resistance will throttle the output of my dirt cells once they're joined.