Taking advice from John Bedini, I managed to form a thin black oxide layer on copper, and red oxide on another piece of copper. Then I pasted them into an Epsom and Rochelle salts cell.
After a few weeks, the only output is from the ambient heat and light in the room. If I shine light into the cell, the power can double and if I heat the cell lightly, I can get 3 to 6x the power. I haven’t pushed it too far on the heat side as I don’t want the salts to melt and cause the cell to reset. The cell can also be charged with low voltage from a nearly dead battery and it will hold for some time at a current above the ambient heat level of output–like a cap of sorts. Freezing it to -38F left the cell output at zero, BUT it would still produce power if illuminated.
I brazed a strip of copper to a small cap and re-tried the experiment in water. I used steam distilled drinking water: PH 7.8-8.0. The exact same effect was seen. Although, the cell was more sensitive to light using the far more transparent water. The water did not become murky and the metals and oxides were not attacked in any way that I could notice. The response to heating was the same as the salty dry cell. The Wet cells worked best, because they did not slowly degrade like the Epsom and Rochell salts cell, which slowly stopped working for me in this experiment. They just had to be constantly topped off with water because of evaporation, which could be fixed by enclosure.
How to make a copper-copper cell:
- I used 2 copper pipe caps: one is 1/2″ the other is 3/4″. On the small cap, drill a few holes into the end. The nail points up in both P and N fabrication. I used a simple propane torch for heating the copper caps and Oxy-Propane and hi temp braze to connect the copper electrodes together for the wet cell.
- For my salmon color P+ oxide layer: Use a pair of vice grips to hold a 3-4inch nail upright. On the nail place the 1/2″ cap. Heat with a blow torch until bright Orange in temp. Then quickly drop it into 3-4 inches of water. To quench it suddenly.
- For my black oxide N layer: on the inside of the larger cap (3/4″) set the vice grips with nail on the bench. set the cap on the nail. Heat with blow torch until it just starts to uniformly turn red. Stop and let the cap cool down slowly; we want a thin layer of black oxide that’s not prone to flake off.
- Place the 3/4 black N cap on a hot plate. Fill with Epsom and Rochelle-salt mix and heat slowly.
- When molten I inserted the smaller red cap into the 3/4″ cap with 0.8V DC across it until it was cold.
- Making connection to the outer cap: Use a grinder or wire wheel to grind down the outside diameter oxide back to the bare copper. Then solder or use a hose clamp to make the connection.
If the power could be increased significantly this might work well in a solar water heater to provide power for some system part, maybe a pump.
Thanks John Bedini, because of you, I made a semiconductor power cell that’s easy and very repeatable. Though it produced a very low power output, the physics is most interesting.
If anyone can improve on this please LET ME KNOW.
I’m thinking about trying Ibpointless2’s mix in one of these.
Dave
letsreplicate 