I keep thinking about that high school chem lab where you took a copper electrode and a zinc eletrode and put them in an electrolyte solution and made electricity, wellll, couldn't you do this on a larger scale and connect them in series and get sone serious volts and amps???? Zeda

-- zeda (rickster@n-jcenter.com), June 03, 1999

Answers

Only if you had a lot of time, materials, and space. Well ventilated space. As you may recall, that electroyte solution you used was (probably) an acid. That's what's used in your car battery.

In any event, for the electrolyte to have any appreciable degree of efficiency, it would have to have the chemical makeup similar to batter acid. Which, when you charge the battery, emits toxic fumes.

If you intend to build a cold fusion generator, then ignore the above.

-- LP (soldog@hotmail.com), June 03, 1999.

You have cells and batteries mixed up, I think. A single cell will produce only the native voltage of the materials in question, no matter how large the cell is. The surface area of the electrodes determine the maximum amperage produced, and their massiveness determines the life of the cell. So even a huge cell will produce only a volt and a half or so with zinc and copper in hydrochloric acid.

Much simpler (and probably cheaper) to buy a few sets of deep cycle RV or Marine batteries and keep them charged. If you really want to go that route - I know some ranchers in Texas have their own windpower plants because the cost of running lines to their spreads is too great. They use battery banks to keep the current flowing when the wind isn't blowing.

Not something I really recommend - your power will end up costing you more if you are anywhere near an electric line. But hey, its your money.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), June 03, 1999.

Thanks for the responses, I have a little over 3 acres in rural Florida and a have been a lurker for months, well into preparations and always thinking about alternatives. It seems that there should be some kind of energy cell you could make with cheap and easly available materials and if you hooked them together in series, get 12 volts with 8 cells. I want an energy system to runs some fans and cooling pumps in the summer and unless I buy alot of batteries and gas for the generaters or figure out the cold fusion process, I'm in for a long hot summer in the swamp. Zeda

-- Zeda (rickster@n-jcenter.com), June 03, 1999.

A couple of thoughts

You might look into fuel cells or build yourself a wind generator out of some alternator parts. Chicago gear has a unit that jumps the speed about 9 to 1 and would work well to get the speed up. Otherwise, use pulleys. Propellors are easy to carve, if you can find a template and a draw knife.

Cooling - have you thought about one of the cheap cooling widgets? A couple of hundred yards of 12 or 15 inch pipe buried 8 or ten feet underground will cool quite a bit of air pulled through it with a fan. I think the year around deep ground temp in Florida is about 60 degrees.

Another option is use a well (does not have to be potable water) for cooling by pumping the cool well water through a heat exchanger and blowing air across the heat exchanger vanes. A plywood box and three car radiators hooked together in the box will work. The water is returned to the ground or used for watering the lawn or whatever. Sort of a home grown air conditioner.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), June 04, 1999.