Re: General Questions

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>

Hi,

So, with one able to buy a fancy filter at WallMart and rig a recirc
system.  Then getting distilled water and all.  Is it possible to make a
Tesla primary cap with plates in really pure (that a normal guy can make)
deionized water.  You would have to charge the water immersed plates at
60Hz to like 20kV.  It sounds really tough since the high voltage would
want to mess up the water really fast, but thought I would ask...

Cartridge filters and little water pumps are relativley cheap if it would
have a chance of working...

I thought it would be a practical use for some of this "chemystery" talk ;-))

Cheers,

	Terry


At 12:58 AM 4/11/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi Jason, All!
>
>Whoaup lad!  This chemistry is tricky stuff (and perilously near off
>topic) and there's few things so weird and wonderful as water, of
>which ye and me are living proof!  (Well, OK, antimony pentafluoride
>is pretty whacky but I wouldn't want a bath in it ;-)
>
>>but by default water is an ionic compound and therefore a charge
>carrier! in
>>this way, you CANT have de-ionised water because water itself is
>ionic!!!
>
>
>Well, yes, water is an ionic compound, but in the absence of any ionic
>impurities, the equilibrium lies well away from the fully dissociated
>state, in fact there's scarcely any free H+ or HO- at all!  "To make
>gold, you must take gold" as the old alchemists used to say, and if
>you want dissociated ions, you must add dissociated ions.  In the
>total absence of extraneous muck (technical term) only one in 10^14
>water molecules is dissociated at room temperature.
>
>>The H+ ions will move electrons around very efficiently, and even a
>high
>>resistivity will not really be enough to stop a large amount of
>voltage!
>
>
>If the water is clean enough, you can use it to cool high power valve
>transmitters which have the water flowing through the anode at say
>20kV - on a continuous basis.  Usually you help things by using narrow
>bore insulating hose maybe a hundred feet long.  That way the total
>resistive path via the water is more ohms.  This is old technology,
>the stuff which existed before modern ion exchange resins were
>invented; water-cooled valves date back to the 1920s and some are
>displayed in the Science Museum, London (or were a few years ago) in
>their radio exhibit.  What Jim et al have said is true.  *Really*
>clean water is a very good insulator, but the ionic impurities (e.g.
>sodium, sulphate, chloride etc ions) do have to be sub-ppm (and
>probably sub-ppb) for the more impressive applications, like the 500kV
>dc switching converter (does this thing have a web presence?  If so
>I'd like to see it).  Only modern ion exchange resins can do that on
>the large scale, continuously. [soapbox mode] Polymer chemistry!
>[soapbox mode off].
>
>>Anyway, a tesla system is in no part DC!!!
>
>Ohms is still ohms.
>
>Dunckx
>