@Sutra: Thanks for posting your pics Sutra!
I like your 50cent-cell, it's a nice size and looks quite cool.
As for the colour, that depends quite a bit on the amount of
metal. Indeed, the stuff JH shows in his videos tends to look
much more white-ish than the grey material on your pics.
I myself have also not produced any JH cells with that nice
white colour... Although perhaps I should mention that
I have not seen any clear pictures of what JH's cell material
looks like after solidifying and drying and all... So it could be
that his final material looks just as grey as yours does.
The JH cell(s) I made so far all had this greyish hue, but
I have made test batches of material that did turn out quite white(ish).
I shall attach a pic to this post that shows a small ceramic dish
in which I baked a mix of R.salt, quartz sand, a tiny bt of titanium
dioxide powder, a bit of luminescent powder, and a pinch of
aluminium powder. And waterglass. It was well mixed to a liquid goo
and consisted for the most part of R.salt (70%) and quartz sand (20-25%).
I heated it at 120-130 degrees C for about 30 to 45 minutes, and after that
I was lucky to be able to get the stirring rod out before it hardened completely.
Totally useless chunk of hard material now, no way to get it out without
destroying the ceramic dish... But at least I now know exactly what that mix
composition does. Ok, it reacts very similar to most such mixes, but
I just wanted to show you it is well possible to make a whiteish material
with the R.salt base.
(the square metal cell on the left side of that pic
is a totally different mix of mostly metals, oxides, and some binder)
@Ian: lookit, we've got another cell builder!
Oh, and here's a picture of the Quirk tube for your entertainment.
I took some more but the closeups of the gooey "sweat" did
not come out right so this one will have to do for now.
I put it next to a fesh clean tube so you can see what the Quirk did
to the aluminium. The dark discoloration and the "sweat" on
the outside of the tube are clearly visible, although unfortunately
it is not so clearly visibe that most of it actually did not drip down
from the rim, but actually came through the cylinder wall...
The copper cylinder I rolled of a piece of copper foil can be seen sticking
out the top of the alu tube, and the nice blue line indicates where
the top of the tube used to be before the Quirk started working it up.
I have as of yet not tested the cell for output as a) the stuff is still not
dry ergo yucky goo on the equipment b) idem dito ergo high chance
of galvanics c) aluminium + gallium + moisture = continuous aluminium
oxidation mediated/catalysed by the gallium => alu oxidation does not
stop untill all the aluminium has been converted into alumina => galvanics.
I did tell you about that, did I not? Al-Ga alloy, beside it forming funky
jelly-like material, has this tendency... Basically pure Al just oxidises immediately
on a monoatomic film on its outer surface, and then it stops. Pure Ga does
not oxidise rapidly in air at all, but it is more mobile at lower temperatures,
and it does have an affinity with Al, plus its atoms can creep into the pores of
the Al; what seems to happen is that the alumina is more of an obstacle and
has much less affinity with Ga in its interatomic movement, so the Ga creeps
over it and happens to drag a fresh Al atom along which when exposed to air
oxidises immediately. This way the Aluminiums natural "defence" against corrosion,
its "trick" to only oxidise its outermost monoatomic layer, is circumvented and
100% of the Al can oxidise.
Anyway, this suggests that I can leave the Quirk as is and in a couple of weeks or
months the tube should start falling apart...
One cool trick to be done with Al-Ga alloy: put some Al-Ga pellets in clean water
and watch the hydrogen bubble up!
Pros: quite a bit of hydrogen fast; Cons:
you'll end up with alumina and Ga, and the only good way to make pure Al is
to perform electrolysis on alumina, which obviously costs more than you can
get out in hydrogen, so it is not as efficient as just performing electrolysis on
water itself to produce hydrogen. So not a winner yet.
Best regards!
