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keantoken

Wed Nov 26 2008, 08:33AM

Registered Member #1442 Joined: Mon Apr 14 2008, 04:19AM
Location:
Posts: 13

Hello. I am new here and don't have much experience aside from what my plasma globe has been able to offer, so I would like to ask some questions:

1: If I were to take the globe off of my plasma globe, should the FBT be useful for Kirlian photography?

2: Tesla has suggested Linseed oil in his experiments, although this is undoubtedly outdated. In the link below it is stated that linseed oil has a dielectric breakdown of 300V per mil. Is this good? Boiled linseed oil will eventually dry and become hard, which seems to be useful to me. I have searched these forums and have not found a whisper of linseed oil... The data is on page 318.

,M1

Thank you for answering my questions.

- keantoken

Proud Mary

Wed Nov 26 2008, 09:15AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

In the last few years, and for environmental reasons, there has been a big move back to the use of vegetable oils in high-voltage power transmission and industrial transformers.

See for example:

Ordinary vegetable oils as can be bought for cooking have been used by some 4HV members with good effect.

Others complain that the vegetable oils are smelly when left to oxidize in open air, and disagreeable to work with and clean up after when compared with mineral oil, but these objections have nothing to do with their dielectric properties.

keantoken

Wed Nov 26 2008, 10:12AM

Registered Member #1442 Joined: Mon Apr 14 2008, 04:19AM
Location:
Posts: 13

Thanks Harry. Unfortunately I am not worried about the environment right now. After I have more experience I may decide to use more eco-friendly materials. In any case linseed oil shouldn't be any less natural than vegetable or sunflower oil, although I have not researched this.

If I am to believe the page below, boiled linseed oil is superior to mineral oil in that it has higher dielectric strength and it can also be applied to say a secondary on a TC and let dry.

At any rate I will wait for daytime so there are more replies.

- keantoken

Proud Mary

Wed Nov 26 2008, 11:59AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

If you are interested in using historic materials, my guess is that Tesla would have painted his free-standing coils* with shellac, which was the most popular varnish for induction coils and so on in his time.

Nowadays people tend to use conformal coating, synthetic varnishes, and so on.

Linseed oil is sometimes used as component in mixed vegetable dielectric oil compositions.

"The dielectric fluid composition... wherein the vegetable oil is selected from a group comprising castor oil, coconut oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, linseed oil, olive oil, palm oil, peanut oil, grapeseed oil, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and soybean oil, high oleic variants thereof, and mixtures thereof ."
(Source: (WO/2007/041785) LOW VISCOSITY VEGETABLE OIL-BASED DIELECTRIC FLUIDS)

I'm not quite sure why you want to use dried (polymerised) linseed rather than a modern synthetic varnish on your coil, which would give superior performance with less effort, so perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes here!

*I seem to recall that some of Tesla's horizontal designs were completely immersed in de-gassed linsed oil, and/or wax.

Steve Conner

Wed Nov 26 2008, 12:23PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

I have Tesla's "Experiments With Alternate Currents..." and he often mentions using boiled linseed oil in it.

Proud Mary

Wed Nov 26 2008, 12:41PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

keantoken wrote ...
linseed oil shouldn't be any less natural than vegetable or sunflower oil, although I have not researched this.

Linseed oil is, of course, a vegetable oil. I would guess that it's popularity as a liquid dielectric in Tesla's time was largely economic, a by-product of the flax industry.

Do bear in mind that modern consumer products labelled "boiled linseed oil" are not simply linseed oil that has been boiled to partially polymerize it, but usually have added metallic drying agents (organo-metallic compounds) to accelerate drying. What effect this has on the dielectric strength and electrical stability of the product I do not know.

keantoken

Wed Nov 26 2008, 04:58PM

Registered Member #1442 Joined: Mon Apr 14 2008, 04:19AM
Location:
Posts: 13

Thank you for your replies. I think I have enough information about linseed oil and Kirlian photography, so on to my next question:

3: What are the changes in streamer appearance and behavior as one increases the frequency?

- keantoken

Turkey9

Sat Nov 29 2008, 05:53AM

Registered Member #1451 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 03:48AM
Location: Boulder, Co
Posts: 661

Experiment and find out

keantoken

Sat Nov 29 2008, 08:16AM

Registered Member #1442 Joined: Mon Apr 14 2008, 04:19AM
Location:
Posts: 13

Ah. I will do this then!

- keantken

LutzH

Thu Dec 04 2008, 07:55PM

Registered Member #1721 Joined: Sat Sept 27 2008, 08:44PM
Location:
Posts: 136

Just for Trivia:

Maxwell uses highly refined Castor Oil in its high energy capacitors, so Castor Oil may be a good bet. If in this case you had a catastrophic accident, you may get the "trots" if you assimilated to much of it :)

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