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Author Topic: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison  (Read 524026 times)

Koen1

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #30 on: January 08, 2008, 01:29:22 PM »
@ian: thanks for posting your experiment. Indeed, the increased output when heated appears to indicate pyroelectric effects, most likely due to the tourmaline in the mix. As you may know, different types of tourmaline react to different wavelengths of infrared, and I seem to recall that specifically green and blue/green tourmaline types are sensitive to a wide and fairly deep infrared spectrum. Perhaps using green tourmaline instead of the pink you used would give a higher output at normal "room" or "body" temperatures?
Also, your use of sodium carbide to increase the K, and subsequent remark "similar to an electret", are clearly parallel to TT Brown's approach... ;)
He did indeed use carnauba wax mixed with crushed or small petroelectric rocks in some of his experiments. That is clearly a carnauba wax electret, with pieces of the naturally occurring petroelectric rocks he found imbedded, in an attempt to increase the output and make the electret permanent.
I don't know how much of TT Brown's research into this you have read, but he also studied high K materials and found some of them to exhibit petrovoltaic effects; he very clearly mentions barium titanate as a very good (high K) dielectric, which also exhibits petrovoltaic effects. As you may know, Barium titanate is piezoelectric, dielectric, and also used in "ceramic" electrets. Possibly interesting in this respect is the fact that before barium titanate was used as piezo and dielectric, they often used quartz for the same purposes. Now quartz, however, is not usually seen as a material for use in electrets... But it might be that it can be used as such...
 
@jeanna: Yes, I believe you are right, and that it is indeed the acidic reaction that dissolves the silicate compounds to a point.
Also, your assertion that adding the calcium at a later point might allow for greater decomposition of these compounds seems correct to me. This would probably yield a more homogenous reaction product, in the end.
However, calcium does have a tendency to bind with active chemicals, and is not exactly known for its good conductivity, nor for any other spectacular properties in electrodynamics... Perhaps reducing the amount of calcium might increase the voltage yield?
I merely suggest this because my own experiments and my correspondance with other experimenters appear to indicate that the closer the cell composition gets to calcite formulae, the less output voltage there seems to be... Mind you, this was not in experiments using the exact same chemicals, so there is always a chance that it might have positive effects on this particular mix.

In my latest approach I am trying mixes with no calcium at all, and I have not used sodium carbonate much either... But I have heard of all kinds of things beng used in experimental mixes, from sodium carbonate through simple sodium or potassium chloride, to lithium oxide even...

In the context of the tourmaline, this might be an interesting read: http://www.cheniere.org/articles/Coincidence%20or%20Suppression%20of%20the%20Self-Powering%20Battery%202.doc
It is about the recently deceased mr de Geus, an originally Dutch inventor who had developed a tourmaline energy cell, and was allegedly on the verge of production and marketing of the device. Not much clear information on the cell composition though, unfortunately.

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #31 on: January 09, 2008, 01:31:20 AM »
G'Day all,

@Koen: Yes I am familiar with TT Browns work,I've been studying his lab journals (on and off) for a number of years.
He was a very innovative man and I don't think he was given the recognition he deserved. I've been experimenting with a variation
of his electrets, using silicon carbide and tourmaline bonded in polyurethane resin. 3000V across it while it is curing gives very
interesting results.
At the moment I'm working on marrying the two techniques of Brown and Hutchison to produce what would basically be a plastic battery. I find this an exciting field of investigation.

It would appear that the mix I made on January 5th has turned into a very sensitive thermometer. As the temp rises so to the voltage, when the temp drops below 10c the voltage reverses and goes negative. This confirms for me that it is the tourmaline
that is suppling the charge to the electrodes. It's now a case of improving the current density of the mix.

I would like to get my hands on some Barium Titanate but sourcing chemicals in Canberra is difficult these days so quartz will have to do for the moment.

@Jeanna:  Correct once again me dear. The clinker was the reactive ingredient.I can see now why John Hutchison does not need a lot of heat in his mixes. The hard work has already been done for him, the clinker he uses has already undergone extreme heat in its production. He just using and bonding the fused silicates. ( so what is his bonding agent????).

As always comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards  Ian

jeanna

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #32 on: January 09, 2008, 02:59:34 AM »
G'Day all,

@Koen: Yes I am familiar with TT Browns work,I've been studying his lab journals (on and off) for a number of years.
 @Jeanna: He just using and bonding the fused silicates. ( so what is his bonding agent????).

As always comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards  Ian


Ian.  My question to you is where are TTBrown's lab notes? Are they on the internet somewhere?

I think the answer to what the bonding agent is is the silicates themselves. They grow in the way of fibers through the mass of the stone. Calcium does this in the curing of cement if the silicates don't get there first.
I will find the exact page if needed, but I will describe what prof Davidovits claims has in the past been used to make artificial limestone or granite.
First add sodium carbonate to water. then add some clay. This dissolves the clay into Al and various silicates. Once these silicates are freed up from the chemistry of the clay, add some ground limestone or granite or whatever and let the water evaporate. In his example, the water evaporated in about 2 weeks at the temperature of a hot summer day.

He thought that he discovered a building material. (It is a building material that I was researching when I found his information.) Perhaps he gave the world something more interesting than a new building material.

I don't know if this is what J Hutchison is doing, of course, but it might be a clue to it. Professor Davidovits began publishing his theories in 1979. I will look up those pages if you can not find them. Please ask if you need them.

Thank you,

jeanna

jeanna

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #33 on: January 13, 2008, 10:12:11 PM »
I just want to report about this little "stone" I made.

I made it by dissolving the clay (ala Prof Davidovits) with sodium carbonate. then I added some hydrated lime. I wanted crushed lime but it wasn't available, so I added sand just to see. Later I painted this with sodium silicate. I let it dry which took 2 weeks or so. It seemd a long time for something so little.

 If I stick the probes on either side of it. (It is only a pebble 1" x 1" x 1/4") I get 0.048VDC which cycles to 0 or even - 0.20vdc sometimes. I do not get this effect at all on a similar pebble that I did not paint with sodium silicate.BTW I am very careful not to touch the probes. (My own gsr might be higher than the reading. Sometimes it is 0.09 but usually it is 0.024-0.048vdc)

jeanna

Koen1

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #34 on: January 14, 2008, 01:54:34 PM »
interesting...
Can you please tell me what exact geopolymer formula/mix you used to make this stone?

And what form of sodium silicate did you use, exactly? Was it NaSiO2OH, or a sodium metasilicate of some type?
I ask because there's a lot of different types of sodium silicate compounds, and the most commonly available ones are metasilicates, or "simple" sodium silicate hydroxides. And of course these all react and also dry at different rates and diffeent manners, depending on the substance to which and the manner in which it is applied.

By the way, thanks for reminding me of the geopolymer approach; I knew of it but hadn't actually considered using it in this path of research... Might prove interesting after all. I've downloaded all of the pdfs Davidovits posted on his site, may try incorporating the geopolymer approach in experiments soon.


jeanna

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #35 on: January 14, 2008, 07:22:33 PM »
interesting...
Can you please tell me what exact geopolymer formula/mix you used to make this stone?

And what form of sodium silicate did you use, exactly? Was it NaSiO2OH, or a sodium metasilicate of some type?


First, I'll say the bottle is slim on information. It is sodium silicate (water glass) solution. 42 baume. I got it from the chemistry store in south carolina. I paid 10 for the stuff and 20 for the shipping.

Now, I can tell you from my notes what I did. I was looking for a building material (which this is not - it is very powdery as a structure, as though the clay lost all its stickyness, which I suspect it did.)

The original mix was this:
2 cups carbon-filtered water (or rain I don't remember)
1/6 cup sodium carbonate
1/4 cup green and red clay mixed (green says montmorollinite mg smetites etc the red only says kaolin)
mixed these til they liquified.
1 cup s-type lime. (this is a partially hydrated not yet calcium di-hydroxide available in washington state.)
to this I added 4 cups CaCO3 beads -I wanted ground limestone but all the store had was this stuff made from precipitated materials being reused from the processing of lime. It must have a lot of sulphur in it. It smelled like the perm my mom used to give herself in the 50's. I think that perm smell comes from sulphur. Anyway it was certainly not just CaCO3 .
my notes continue:
"after 4-5 days it is still wet but a goop is at the bottom. I brought up some goop and added sand to it & mixed. I made a dry mix like cement aprox 1 goop : 4 or 5 sterile play sand. This is to see if that goop will be a good binder for sand or other aggregate. Brought this (w/ sand) in house 11/18/07."
Later on I found a 19th century reference from Kuhlmann that he "silicatized" various things and got interesting results. Cyrano on the pyramid thread did a control of probes in salted moist sand and found voltage. I repeated his and also found voltage. That is when I broke off a piece of this - now dry- from the bottom of the jar and painted it with sodium silicate ("silicatized" it)

-------
If you search google for silicatize or kuhlmann you should be led to several digitized books indexed and free from google. (thanks google)
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Are you a chemist? I am not and I am not confident in my ability to accurately calculate weights from molar amounts. This is the reason I used approximate measuring tools like cups. I would like very much to be able to weigh out the proper amounts. Prof Davidovits' patents describe the amounts in moles. Are you able to help me with this?

I hope this clarifies what this petrovoltaic (e-pebble) is.

jeanna

 


 

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #36 on: January 17, 2008, 07:48:25 PM »
G'day all,

Meet Timmy Tin Tart tray. This is made from a similar mix as the one I made on 5th January. The voltage you see has remained stable for 3 days nows. But as before ,the current is pretty weak.
(http://)
@jeanna: Do you think it might work better if I added some salmon fish oil  ;D ;D


Ian

jeanna

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #37 on: January 17, 2008, 08:17:54 PM »
G'day all,

Meet Timmy Tin Tart tray. This is made from a similar mix as the one I made on 5th January. The voltage you see has remained stable for 3 days nows. But as before ,the current is pretty weak.
Ian
Anyway that mix I made on Jan 5th is still sitting at 120mv even after dead shorting it for an hour this morning. Next stop, add the liquid silicates.
So, I am curious, did you add the liquid silicates? and if so, at what point in the process? (It makes cement and plasters sieze up very quickly if you add it in during the mixing. but that is without added heat.)
jeanna
PS I will remove the last part of the quote if you ask me to.

neptune

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #38 on: January 17, 2008, 08:51:02 PM »
@Koen1. You are obviously a very knowledgeable person in your field. I have been doing research on pyramids[see First electrical output from a pyramid]. Perhaps you could shed some light on the use of quartz sand [in conjunction with graphite and copper] in Thomas Tawoegers experiments. Note especially that these substances are used inside a coil of copper wire, and so presumably within a magnetic field. any comments would be much valued.

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #39 on: January 17, 2008, 09:32:51 PM »
G'day all,

@ jeanna:  I reground the leftovers from the first mix, this had already been through a baking process.
Next I made up some sodium silicate (from powder) into a thick syrup.

This was by no means a scientifc test just a "lets see what happens" type of thing.

To 2 teaspoons of NaSi03 I added the same amount of ground mix, to that , 2 tsp of calcium carbonate and 2 tsp of sodium carbonate.  Poured the thickening gloop (as you put it) into the tart tin.  Baked on hot plate (low heat) for 40 mins.

I now have a sort of electric biscuit.

So really I have combined two processess.  I'm not getting too excited about this one just yet, I'll let it mature for a few weeks and see if there is any residual chemical action.

Ian

Koen1

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #40 on: January 18, 2008, 01:07:23 AM »
sorry guys, don't have much time to write at the moment... but will be back soon.

@jeanna: thanks for the story about your pebble, the waterglass, etc; made me read the davidovits files again :)
I also found out some more about the waterglass; it isn't commonly sold or used around here (any more), so I hadn't actually seen it around...
But it turns out it was very common about 40 years ago. It is indeed Sodium Silicate, but the thing about that "family" is that there's a lot of different sodium silicates. For waterglass, usually the Sodium Silicate formula of Na2SiO3 is given (on bottle labels and in books). But in fact, there are many other forms, such as Na4SiO4, Na6Si2O7, etcetera. Sodium Silicates absorb water very easily, and are often found with an x number of H2O molecules around; they dissolve in water. Various types of silicates contain some water in this way, and most of this water is bound through H- and OH- bridges to the silicate molecules. Na2SiO3 absorbs quite a lot of water, and is used in those little dehydration sachets that come in new shoe boxes, to keep them dry... (you know, the ones that always read "do not eat"). That form of 'sodium meta-silicate' is clearly different from the waterglass form. Although if you can make the waterglass dry in nice round balls, you might well get something nearly identical to those... In any case, the amount of water and other minerals, as well as the variation in exact molecules, makes for quite a range of possible versions of Sodium Silicate. 
Now, to get back to the mixing and reactions that tend to occur, all sand and most types of rock also contain quite a lot of SiO2.
Combining SiO2 (quartz/sand) and Na2CO3 (sodium carbonate) at high temperature causes them to react and form Si2O3 and CO2. So when you mix the two, you're actually creating waterglass, which will absorb water and can be baked dry. Perhaps we can use waterglass as a sort of binding agent, so the mix actually bakes into a nice cake...

@ian: thanks for posting your pic and information! :) Nice stuff.
May I ask what you use to mix the stuff in? Is it a ceramic vessel of some kind?
And does/did the "gloop" react in any way with the tin?
Indeed, best to leave it sit for a while, and see if there's still any of that nice voltage left by then.
But still, a very nice attempt at baking our much sought after electric "cookie" .  ;)

@neptune: I thought the Trawoeger pyramid used salt water in the sand? That sounds like an electrochemical effect to me...

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #41 on: January 18, 2008, 01:53:02 AM »
G'Day again,

@ Koen1,  I mixed the paste in a plastic food container (take out).  As far as a reaction with tin goes, I suspect it did initially.  However once the "cookie" was baked it separated from the tin very easily. I used the base of the tin as the negative terminal.  Even if I sandwich the "cookie" between two stainless steel plates ie non dissimilar metals, I still read the same voltage.  I ran a ph test on the surface and found it was still very alkaline , ph 11.

This is why I'm not too excited about this one because while that ph level exists, galvanic reactions cannot be ruled out. The next step is to do the reaction again either with less NaSiO3 or with an acid as a neutralizer.

If I can get to stage of ph 7 and still get a voltage then I'll get excited  ;D

BTW   this "cookie" was not polarized by an external voltage,  it did it all by itself. 

Anyway this weekend I'll be making a new mix using "jeannacrete" LOL  ;D

All the best

Ian

nightlife

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #42 on: January 19, 2008, 06:56:27 AM »
Here is a sketch of a electric cookie idea.


ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #43 on: January 19, 2008, 11:13:31 AM »
G'day All.

@nightlife:  Once we get the crystaline structure of the mix right your diagram would be a very efficient configuration
I would think.  Thanks.





Ian

Koen1

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #44 on: January 23, 2008, 01:45:17 PM »
In relation to a discussion I had recently, this might be interesting.

I had a discussion about possible "energy emitting" rocks, with some friends.
At some point, one of them remarked that "energy emitting" rocks were all the fashion,
back in the 1600-1900s, and he remembered one that his grandpa had kept locked away in a small chest, and had shown him when he had been a small boy.
He described it as a small lump of rock resembling dirty ferrite mixed with feltspar and mica, but with the odd
characteristic of emitting a bright blueish white light continuously, while it sometimes seemed to "pulsate" a bit.
Recently he asked around the family but nobody seems to know where the rock went.

Obviously interested, I tried to get as much info from him as possible, while I recounted the story of Moray and his
mysterious "Swedish stone". That stone, which Moray used in his amplifying power circuits, had the odd characteristics of being a crystal and as such it could be used as a crystal radio detector element, and at the same time it amplified the radio signals with significant amounts of power, with no apparent energy source.
Later is was found that Morays stone probably contained light beta radioactive elements, as well as high intensity short halflife radioactive compounds. The (stimulated) beta- and electron-emissions were probably the source of the amplifying power, and the crystal structure with its inherent instabilities was probably why the detector functioned quite well.

Would replicating such a rock give us a cool new power source? No.
At least, not an efficient one, nor a very safe one.
Could we make a type of rock that is somewhat similar, and still outputs significant energy?
Yes. We can make a ceramic that contains a significant amount of beta-radioactive material.
Beta particles are electrons emitted from a beta-radioactive material. What we would in fact be making,
is a form of atomic battery. Those have been known for quite a long time.
In theory, on can simply take a certain amount of beta-radioactive material like Cesium, and coat this in an isolator.
Now put another layer of conductor around this, and the beta particles emitted by the Cesium will pass through the
isolator and end up in the conductor, where they behave just like ordinary electrons. This transfer causes to Cesium to lose one electron charge, thereby becoming relatively more positive, and the conductor to gain one elecgron charge, thereby becoming relatively negatively charged. The electric charge gained in the conductor will tend to move toward the positive "pole", in this case the Cesium material, so we need to connect the outer conductor layer to the Cesium via a wire, which will then show current.
For those interested in beta-batteries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery.

It is not hard to conceive of a material that shows such beta-emission characteristics. It is also not difficult to imagine how such a material, if included in the composition of a crystalline oscillator material sensitive to specific frequencies, might produce regular bursts or pulses of radiation and/or electrical charge output. Now to combine a phosphoric substance to the crystalline matrix which allows these bursts of energy to be transformed into bursts or flashes of light, is also not too difficult to imagine.
I propose that the rock witnessed by this firend of mine was some such type of rock. A natural (beta-)radioactive phosphorescent crystal.

I also suggest this is not the way we want to proceed in order to replicate "electrical rocks", because beta batteries can be made in a more efficient manner, and because they still run out when the radioactivity starts to eb away. Do we want to make a betavoltaic battery that dies after its halflife has passed?
I'm not really looking to build that... Unless of course it's extremely cheap to build and can put out comparatively large amounts of power... But as far as I can figure, betaradioactive cesium is also not the cheapest material. ;)

Seems to me we'd better look at energies that are abundant and could be used and transformed into usefull forms of energy.
Off the top of my head that's things like random heat/temperature fluctuations (brownian motion), random electromagnetic fluctuations (as in radio/micro/gamma wave frequency background radiation), gravitational fluctuations, zero point energy fluctuations, and things like that.
One might think of using the resonant motions of the electrons in ferro material, "pushed" by a permanent ferrite magnet, to "drive" the oscillation of a chemically connected quartz matrix, which is in turn connected through a np-diode bridge rectifyer, and to a capacitor.
Of course it's just a rough 'scetch', but something like that might just work, and use the permanent magnet's constant electron rotations to produce an output.
One might also consider the possibility of mercury reacting heavily to slight fluctuations in temperature or incoming radiation, and the possibility to rectify any of those fluctuations again... But mercury is quite unhealthy so might not be the best plan to play with...

At the moment I am conducting some experiments with a few different types of Silicate, and Aluminium, in an attempt to produce
a Sialate-type compound, for geopolymer based tests of certain substance mixes.
I am planning to do some kiln experiments when I have access to a 1000+ degree kiln, which should be within the coming year.

Replicating one of Ians cookie-baking recipes might be an interesting little project in between. :)
Any additional comments on your cookie or on the above, Ian?

Kind regards,
Koen