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Author Topic: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !  (Read 121131 times)

hartiberlin

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #30 on: November 05, 2009, 07:13:01 PM »
Hi. I have registered in this forum looking for a independet prize for a real world-scale new idea for solvering the world energy demand...I have one of such kind of ideas, can you tell me how can I apply for the prize, please?. Thank you so much. Dr. Luis Juanicó, argentinean researcher in renewables.

Hi,
have a look at this:

http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=5707.0

Do you have a selfrunning system that needs no batteries and puts out more than 1 Watts ?

Thanks.

Regards, Stefan.

hartiberlin

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #31 on: November 07, 2009, 07:21:28 PM »
Here are a few answers from user Anders from the Sweish forum,
which he emailed me and said, it is okay to post it here:

Hi Stefan!

We got the Teflon for free from Dupont in Norway, they was thrilled to support such a potentialy interesting project, and 1 L cost only 250 SEK + VAT.
I belive firmly it would be best for all if you could order directly from an office in Germany, our supply is limited for own use.
Also notice that Dupont for commersial use requires a license agreement, therfore state the nature of the project beeing small scale testing of batteries.
If You still will not succeed getting any deliveries (from Germany), perhaps try with the office in Norway, ask for John Jansen at phone +47 38084100 (perhaps old number?), or try Dupont in Sweden, phone: +46 8591194 39.

Notice that perhaps (?) the number 30B my have been changed to TE 3885 ?!
""Teflon® PTFE 30B fluoropolymer resin is a negatively
charged, hydrophobic colloid, containing
approximately 60% (by total weight) of 0.05 to
0.5 mikrometer polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) resin
particles suspended in water. Seen as a milky white
liquid, it also contains approximately 8% (by weight
of PTFE) of a nonionic wetting agent and stabilizer.""

http://www2.dupont.com/Teflon_Industrial/en_US/products/product_by_name/teflon_ptfe/aqueous.html

http://www2.dupont.com/Teflon_Industrial/en_US/assets/downloads/k15764.pdf

Thanks for the graphite paper offer, but no thanks, pretty much everything is best with the stainless mesh, the price is almost nothing and the cathode becomes ridgit/more solid and very good conducting electricity. I do reecomend You using it!
http://www.sintab.se/

Before I forget it, for the cathode to work over one our it needs a "cellguard" film atatched to the wet electolyte side. I have not yet testing this myself since I have bought commersial cathodes from Electric Fuel (to speed up the prototype making). Probably later I wiil do a test with also a cellguard attatched to the cathode.

http://www.celgard.com/default.asp
http://www.celgard.com/products/specialty-membranes.asp

Sorry if I cant keep up with all Your questions for the moment, belive it or not, but all in a sudden the acitivity around this zinc air battery project just explodes...! So much to write and study that I wish I had two brains....

My problems besides trying to save the world (...) with good EV batteries, is that I so many other ideas I would like to experiment with, a favorite is a solar cell made with an ink jet writer onto transperant plastic film (for OH), and spray different layers of nano coal and nano copper oxide, also have solutions on wind turbines and, well You guessed right -a free energy device (a magnet generator). But please, I am so limited in strenght and resources I hardly keep up whith this zinc project!

Regards
Anders

hartiberlin

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #32 on: November 07, 2009, 07:22:54 PM »

> Hi Anders,
> many thanks for these infos.
>
> Could this be posted in my forum or is this info
> just for me ?
>
> What is the Teflon exactly doing ?
>
> Does it just only support more oxygen from
> the air going into the graphite (charcoal )
>
> What happens, if you don´t use the Teflon ?
> Is the current then much lower ?
> How much lower ?
>
> Also what about the Maganese Nitrate ?
> Is this still used in your cell ?
>
> I will be soon trying KMNO4, and I hope I don´t blow myself up.
>
> Well, the graphite paper is very easy to make with a cheap
> acrylic binder and this graphite electrode then conducts
> very well, so no stainless steel needed, which saves money...
>
> Wherefore do you need this cellgard ?
> Is this there for the recharge capabilities
> or can´t you just otherwise use a gel like
> superabsorbers (polyacryl salts)to keep the KOH solution inside such a gel ?
>
> Many thanks.
>
> Regards, Stefan.


Hi Stefan!
Please feel free to copy mail corespondence (my spelling sucks though...)!

The Teflon permits oxygen to enter the micro pourus space in the (well packed) activated carbon, through high surface tention repelling the liquid electrolyte (KOH/H2O) and creating path ways for the air to travel inside the cathode, otherwise only the outer atom layer of the cathode would be active, followed by a very low current density (mA).
There are other concepts dealing with the air flow problem; some use a lose (fluffy and space consuming) carbon powder without any Teflon, but this cause a very high inner resistance with a high voltage drop, which also make them power weak.
See:
http://elbil.forum24.se/elbil-about844-0-asc-80.html
http://www.tedilo.de/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=zink&x=0&y=0

Notice that when making a cathode one must use fine activated carbon powder, not just ordinary coal (from the woodstove...). What makes catalysies to work is the plentyfull very tiny pits on the carbon surface -its all about having a huge amount of active surface for the oxygen to interact and become into OH with the electrolyte (actualy the water). It will work with ordinary coal powder as well, but it will give of a very low current.
And the adsorbed Silver or MnNO3 are mainly there to raise the cell voltage. It works fine also without the adsorbed "voltage doping" substance (Silver), but the cell voltage will be lower when discharging/draining current.
The cell seen on Youtube have Silver in it, wich give a slight higher voltage than MnNO3.
It is also more easy to do the adsorbing process with Silver, since the MnNO3 requires a baking process during several days...

The cellguard fabric prevents poisening zincate ions (negative charged zinc) to enter the cathode which will reduce the catalytic activity and thereby stop the cell function. The zincate ions are temporary semi product in the process of forming ZnO from Zn.
So a cell without cellguard will function only a rellative short while (hours).
I gues it would be possible to fix this zincate problem with also other technics, like a internal galvanic polarity charge /tention/voltage that prevents the negative ions from travling from the zinc anode to the cathode...(?)
I gues a gel would also (at least partly) stop the zincate ions, it needs to be tested!

And by the way, the electrolyte are not consumed during discharge, it has the same overall concentration all the time. In the cathode oxygen are binded with hydrogen to OH (negative charged), and releases the hydrogen back to the electrolyte at the zinc anode where zinc becomes into ZnO. -A closed lope.

Regards
Anders

jadaro2600

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #33 on: November 07, 2009, 09:12:10 PM »
Due to a lack of multilingual abilities, as / would it be possible to get an English DIY how-to for this type of cell?  Can someone post some instructions as well as an good explanation of what is going on in the same instructions.

I've read the basic information, however, there are still undetermined factors, I think.

neutrino

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #34 on: November 10, 2009, 04:27:46 PM »
How to make an air cathode without Teflon. -a sintered electrode using a slight over air pressure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_diffusion_electrode

Wikipedia about zinc and aluminium air battery. Notice that zinc gives of 2 electrones for every used zinc atom, while the aluminium atom gives of 3 , and at the same time beeing more then twice as light, giving theoretical 6000 Wh/kg...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc-air_battery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_battery

samawati

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #35 on: November 16, 2009, 05:52:00 PM »
How would this technology be used in space where there is no air?

gmeast

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #36 on: November 20, 2009, 06:12:38 AM »
Before the user Anders wrote in Swedish:

I väntan på den stora pressardagen görs ett förtest med endast en liten testbit av strömnät och Silverkolpulver manuellt muskel-pressat med tesked över 1 cm2 yta, Nedsänkt i en liten rostfri bytta med Zink i botten och Luftkatoden ovanför mäts den lilla ström som ev kommer från så liten yta. Med alla (ca 5) gram Silver som lösts upp i Silvergeneratorn och förhoppningsvis/troligtvis adsorberats i kolpulvret är det inte helt orimliga värdet 50 mA kontinuerligt (nominellt) tänkbart, kanske tom 100 mA !
Detta innebär i så fall för den färdiga prototypcellen på ca 200 cm2 att minimum 10 A kommer ur den lilla lunchlådan (cellkärlet) med samtidigt 1 V, vilket blir 10 W effekt, ungefär vad en baklampa drar..! I bästa fall 20 A, och 20 W..!
=================================

Maybe someone can help with a better translation ?
Many thanks in advance.

Hi all,

This Zinc-Air Battery, or better, Zinc-Air Fuel Cell is exciting technology and it is not new.  Ten years ago several European concerns and if my recall is good some Isreali innovators were proposing large scale infrastructure to integrate this into a practical way to power electric automobiles.  The power density is about the same as gasoline regarding volumetric efficiency (size and such).

In a nut shell and according to a great Wiki reference:

In one type of zinc-air fuel cell, zinc fuel is replenished and zinc oxide waste is removed ... continuously by pushing zinc electrolyte paste or pellets into an anode chamber. Waste zinc oxide is pumped into a waste tank inside the fuel tank and fresh zinc paste or pellets are taken from the fuel tank. The zinc oxide waste is pumped out at a refueling station and sent to a recycling plant.

But, the most practical approach that I had seen was to have a zinc-air fuel cell that 'unplugs' from the car's undercarriage and is replaced by a fresh 'plug-in' and away you go.  The spent fuel cell is hauled off (with others) to be 'recharged' at a power plant during off-peak hours or by solar, wind, hydro.  Certain of the zinc-air fuel cells have been designed such that only electricity is needed to reverse the electrochemical process that turned the Zinc from zinc metal to zinc oxide.  The recharging process in essence 're-plates' the zinc metal back onto the anodes and very little. if any, toxic by-products or waste is generated.

I've been waiting for this technology to mature for about a decade.  I lost all references to this in a computer crash an never rebuilt my database.  If someone can provide some links to the latter above ... great!

Greg

FatChance!!!

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #37 on: December 14, 2009, 10:42:30 AM »
How would this technology be used in space where there is no air?

Compressed Air Tubes....as when scuba diving.

derwood

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #38 on: January 18, 2010, 01:53:26 AM »
Hi I have been doing some research on this topic after i saw the vid on A. I was amazed at the current this type a battery could deliver. The basic principle of this type of fuel cell is quite simple, unfortunately the air electrode is the key to a large amount of current. without this it is just an interesting science project. Surface area is the key to the elctrode also it must be very conductive. I am going to start fabricating an electrode as soon as I can find the proper materials. The filter material should be fairly easy to obtain. I feel that it is very important because if you are going to take the time to build these electrodes, lack of filtering would destroy them. The only hard to get material is the teflon binder. I am confident that other binders can be used but from what I have found is that a porous binder must be used. My goal is to build a cell capable of powering an
EV.           

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6291090/description.html
I have Found some very detailed info on how to make this electrode. This should answer all of your questions.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2010, 07:15:11 AM by derwood »

derwood

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« Last Edit: January 18, 2010, 09:42:15 AM by derwood »

derwood

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #40 on: January 18, 2010, 05:26:32 AM »
Binder
http://www.arkema-inc.com/kynar/page.cfm?pag=1156   

Suitable binders include poly[2,2'-(m-phenylene)-5,5'-bibenzimidazole] (PBI), poly[2,5-benzimidazole] (ABPBI), polybenzoxazole (PBO), polybenzothiazole (PBT), and combinations thereof.

phenolic resins, epoxy resins, furan resins, xylenol-formaldehyde resins, urea resins, melamine resins, aniline-formaldehyde resins, Friedel-Crafts resins,unsaturated-polyester resins, polyvinylalcohol, polyacrylic resin, polyvinylbutyral, polyvinylpyrrolidone, polyvinylacetate, polystyrene, polyisobutylene, and others

unsaturated-polyester resins. this might be worth a try. Cheap and easy to find. Boat hull repair. walmart........

« Last Edit: January 18, 2010, 08:23:05 AM by derwood »

jadaro2600

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #41 on: January 18, 2010, 09:07:53 PM »
Yikes, this thread got technical real fast:  here is a link to a portable zinc-air battery for charging mobile devices.  http://www.instant-power.com/instantpower.pdf ..it supplies 3300mAh.

derwood

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #42 on: January 24, 2010, 04:48:02 AM »
Here is a cheap homemade air electrode. http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Carbon-Electrode/




derwood

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #43 on: January 25, 2010, 11:35:04 AM »
 can buy the teflon here!

http://fuelcellearth.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=16&category_id=7&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=26

It doesn't matter what you use to create power. It will always be expensive! Dupont will take the place of the oil companies!!!!!

hartiberlin

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Re: Getting amps from small selfmade DIY Zinc Air cells, amazing !
« Reply #44 on: February 18, 2010, 02:00:18 AM »
No,
you can do it very cheaply now.

When I will put the graphite-acrylic mix onto a
stainless steel mesh I will get into the Ohm range for the
inner electrode resistance and not more in the
KiloOhm range.

This will also get me a cell simular to the Zinc air cell
but just with alufoil.

Have a look at the latest videos:

http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=8782

Regards, Stefan.