Anyone make any home made energy devices?

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travbm
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One was a crude battery made of aluminum, lead and Epsom salt solution. I got the home made battery to charge to 3.7v Due to charching problems I think I should have drained it or formed the electrodes better. It would run a white led minutes. Maybe I should have used a smaller space and use a hydrogel to hold the solution instead.

I tryied crystal cells. But they only work with magnesium and copper or magnesium and carbon best. I though rochelle salt would work with equal parts borax and epsom salt.

I tried to make a chlorine MHD. It is just two plates with 2 rare earth magnets perpendicular to the plates secured in an air tight jar that is clear to let light in. The chlorine gas is ionized by sunlight. The magnets seperate the ions to make a charges. the plates could go to insulated contacts in the lid. That is if I wanted to make a nice one.

I tried to fill a lead acid battery with powdered lime to turn it into a alum battery. The sulfuric acid reacts with the calcium carbonate to make carbon dioxide and calcium sulfate or hydrated calcium sulfate from some water made by the reaction. It fizzed alot and maybe potash may have been better or potassium hydroxide.

Then I have been using a small solar panel to recharge a 100 farad super capacitor. It ran an led for some hours and would a radio a hour or longer.

I tried to make a cyclonic combuster from a pip and a ceramic container or metal coffe can best. It did burn spiraling up the pipe like a chimney. But that may not have been practical. Like making a solid combuster to burn coal with an oxidizer of ammonium nitrate.

I tried three plate capacitor experiments but faild to get any real results if the positive was grounded to the can.

I also tried to make an ion reactor using a spectrum tube but I carelessly broke when it rolled off. I had a high voltage source to ionized the gas. I may have needed two or atleast as more effective one. If I had a thicker tube I could have ionized the gas enough to inuce a field into the coil and vice versa from the collapsing electricomagnetic field of the coil as electro statics and electromagnetics are mutualy inductive in conductors and ionized gases.

But after that did not work I guess I tried to use little epsom salt on zinc as a negative resistance diode. It did not handle current. Maybe I should have tried to make a solid stat MHD by ionized Rochelle salt or lithium chloride from an americium source or mixed with uranium salt. Ohh well. Just some thoughts Nothing I did really work or work well enough. Sure bleach and magnesium and carbon make good electrical power but it is just another battery. I wondered if potash and magnesium and carbon would have worked. But I guess I can't even top an edison battery.
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Xephyr
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I have made a couple.

The earliest was a simple water wheel, with long paddles so the shaft could be well above the water. I used this on a small creek and after some tweaking I was able to get a reasonably consistent 12V DC output, of course after running the current through a transformer. The same setup could conceivably be modified into a wind turbine, but I wan't particularly interested in that at the time. This was quite a few years ago. More recently I've been interested in stirling engines. I'm working on a design that will sit on top of my woodstove and convert all this excess heat into mechanical energy to turn a fan. The next step is to make one that produces electricity, but stirling engines are not very good with working on any serious load, even just magnetic resistance may be trouble, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I've also made capacitors out of snapple bottles, which I hooked up in series way back when I attempted to build a Tesla coil (though I never did end up getting all the parts - after my father caught on to what I was building he shut it down pretty quick). I don't remember the exact value but they had some pretty impressive capacitance.

And of course, batteries are simple enough, and they're effective as long as you don't have a shortage of scrap metal and sulfuric acid. I've been thinking about how its possible to weld with a series of car batteries (which can produce welds on par with an arc welder) so I may be attempting a larger scale battery build down the line.
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After accidentally running 230V through a 12V trainset, I banned myself from most electrical experiments as a kid.


This was probably a good thing given my record with chemistry.
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travbm
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I made a home made wind turbine with my grandfather. We just straped a generator on a piece of wood and put a wind vane on it and made a wood blade for it. It turned in the wind. But did not make usable power. You need a special dynamo where the magnets turn to make power instead of high speed motor or a gear box to make power. But I guess the best home made energy device I did was when a sat a pelteir juntion on the wood stove and it made power but it helped to have a steel bowl filled with snow and ice during the blizard it would run a radio or light pretty well. I wish I just had a giant heat sink. That would have worked if I put it on the chimney and used the cold air from out side. that in turn could make 100 to 200W of power from a temperture difference to recharge lead acid or preferable edison cells and run a power inverter for the tv, or a solar fridge. But other than that I think my home made fuel cell was nice. I used hydrogen peroxide and aluminum plates with citric acid. It needed constant oxidizer though and I hope a nitrate would have worked to keep the fuel cell running. But alumin combines in the cell to make power. A small stack lit an led brightly. But I guess if I had some solid citric acid and an oxygen ion conductor it would have worked better mayber. But as a energy source you can make crystal cells using magnesium and copper with equal parts rochelle salt, epsom salt, and borax. It makes about 1v or so if you useded a powder made in a home made crucible. then mix the powders lightly in the cell. I did figure out that the phone line had power to run leds and charge capacitors.
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Pouring Draino (sodium hydroxide) on aluminum foil generates a bit of heat (not enough to boil water though) and a lot of hydrogen gas which can be burned to create lots of energy. I haven't tried putting this to use, though, because the hydrogen is extremely flammable.

I also accidentally stumbled across a small use for the body's own electrochemical signals. Small though they are, I managed to get a loudspeaker to hum merely by touching the input jack and a transformer to my finger.
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Xephyr
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catfighter wrote:Pouring Draino (sodium hydroxide) on aluminum foil generates a bit of heat (not enough to boil water though) and a lot of hydrogen gas which can be burned to create lots of energy. I haven't tried putting this to use, though, because the hydrogen is extremely flammable.
I used to put a bit of foil in a pop bottle with drano and put a balloon over the top to collect the hydrogen. I experimented with making a fuse that I could light and release the balloon so it would explode as it rose into the air, but I wasn't able to get this to work effectively. I'm sure if I had KNO3 to soak the fuse it would have worked, though.
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travbm
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I tried used motor oil and aluminum and sodium hydroxide in water. It got pretty darn hot. The oil durned into like a glycerin or pale substance.

I tried to duct tape an estees rocket to a toy truck but it jumped up in the aie and spinned like a fire cracker whizzer.
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catfighter
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travbm wrote:I tried to duct tape an estees rocket to a toy truck but it jumped up in the aie and spinned like a fire cracker whizzer.
You should have angled the rocket slightly downwards to prevent liftoff. But turning a truck into a plane sounds just crazy enough to work! :wink:
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