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Registered Member #3026
Joined: Fri Jul 23 2010, 02:46PM
Location: Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Posts: 54
Can anyone tell me if salt water capacitors have a short usable lifespan?I have sixteen beer bottles in a tub of salt water, each bottle filled with salt water with a galvanized carriage bolt. Two weeks ago, this set up gave me 3 to 4 inch output! Now, with nothing changed, I barely have the voltage to bridge my spark gap. I see that a lot of salt has settled to the bottom. Also each bottle has a little “sparkling†at the water line. Is this common? Does it mean a problem?
Registered Member #1408
Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 03:49PM
Location: Oracle, AZ
Posts: 679
When I used them they worked till I took it apart. I did keep the levels up, etc. But they functioned for about a month of fooling around almost every other day. There is saturation & super saturation. With many salts, if hot water is used to bring the solid into solution, super saturation may result wherein more solid has entered into solution that can be maintained at a lowed temperature. If you have exceeded saturation level it's likely that you will have material solidify, etc.
Registered Member #2998
Joined: Tue Jul 13 2010, 08:34PM
Location: Swedish forests.
Posts: 26
The only things you have to worry about in saltwater caps are two things: First, if you break them during operation, things can get very horrible very fast. Second: The lead to the inside of the bottle might start to corrode from electrolysis.
If the bolts are stainless and not magnetic you should be fine, if they are only galvanized I see a problem: skin effect makes magnetic materials useless at higher frequencies. I'd suggest using something else as long as it's fairly massive to resist the corrosion.
Another thing: The corrosion might be producing some metal salts that are pushing the regular NaCl salt out of solution. But if that's the case you should see the water changing to new and interesting colours from the corrosion.
Registered Member #3026
Joined: Fri Jul 23 2010, 02:46PM
Location: Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Posts: 54
No, when I emptied the bottles, the water color was normal. I thought electrolysis only happened with direct current; am I wrong? My galvanized electrodes looked fine, too. Is it normal to see arcing around the water line in the bottle capacitors? I only operated this set-up for less than an hour!
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salt water capacitors
