Warning: Long treatise about current hyperfixation-turned career plan

After a lot of research into different hydrolysis devices and the principles they operate on, I feel confident that I’ve satisfied the theoretical part of this step in my plan: I have the plans for an oxy/hydro fuel cell that I really do think will surpass the designs that inspired it in efficiency and safety. Now I just have to do the blood-sweat-grease alchemy to make it real.

My initial idea for a bulky “double decker sandwich” design, where the anode and cathode plates are two different stacks separated by plexiglass, has been abandoned. Rather than keeping the two gasses separate in this way, which would lead to unavoidable efficiency loss, I’m intermingling the stacks for maximum efficiency while cordoning off one gas-producing surface at a time with 3d printed separators which will be included in the sandwich. Instead of separating the groups of plates, I’m separating the individual spaces between the plates. I am essentially building a scaled up version of this: https://youtu.be/klJzWPo-ZZE?

The separators work by taking advantage of the different polarities in the powered cell: basically, the different sides of the 7 plates will together form a little self-contained mirror hall of positively and negatively charged metal. The negative sides always produce hydrogen, and the positive sides always produce oxygen. But in a normal cell like this, these gases are produced together and rise together, forming the explosive HHO which is very cool but mostly useless for my purposes. But with the addition of the separators, we can split the whole unit into alternating negative and positive layers, which share an input (coolant) but split the outputs. We can channel the gases from these layers alternately into twin manifolds, then into their own tanks and eventually, down two hoses and into a hissing sapphire furnace.

The biggest change I personally have made to distinguish this from other cells like it is the planned addition of heavy nickel plating., The second biggest change was including primitive blowoff valves on each bubbler tank, but I really hope for the nickel plating to be a game-changer, and here’s why:

It might mitigate or solve the toxic waste problem while seriously boosting the device’s power. I may or may not have gotten into this already, but stainless steel, the best balance between conductive and affordable most hydrocell builders can find, is alloyed with up to 10% chromium. This is fine for building stuff, I think, but if you submerge that metal in caustic liquid and zap it with electricity, some of that chromium will leech out into the fuel, making it not just highly caustic but carcinogenic as well. To avoid this, I’m planning to electroplate a THICK coat of nickel on the plates, so thick that apparently they call what I want to do electroforming. If I can add at least a half millimeter of pure nickel to each plate, I’ll be a happy fish. The idea is that the electricity will go along the path of least resistance (nickel is several times more conductive than steel) and spare the vulnerable alloy beneath. This would also greatly increase the cell’s power efficiency, because

nickel is several times more conductive than steel

The way I proceed with this now depends on my ability to electroform, and the outcome of my best attempt. If there’s some reason it can’t work, let me know, I can handle the sadness.

Looking ahead to the next step, I finally found footage of a personal corundum furnace actually working, and seeing it’s design has refilled the wind in my sails and eased my doubts.https://youtu.be/YiS3ZUuCH3c (skip to 7:20 for the money shot) It’s so fucking simple, the combustion chamber is two modified firebricks. The body is a glorified welding torch with a can of oxides on top, and there are a total two pieces of beginner-level robotics in there. Before this, I wondered blindly and anxiously about how I would design the thing. Now, I see that the current step of constructing the gas cell will absolutely be the most expensive and time consuming part. I’m nearing the peak of the mountain, after which momentum will begin to carry me as a friend. Also, I’ve been keeping the cost of fittings down by taking them all from Ken Langone.

Still, I do have one or two important questions that my comrades here, who are more versed in things like math and numbers, could maybe fill me in on:

1. How do I calculate the gas output of this thing? The amperage I can do, but the output I cannot. I want a cell powerful enough to potenially fuel two Verneuil furnaces at once down the road.

2. I’ll edit this in when I remember it 5 minutes after posting