hissingnoise
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The dawn of a new era for ozone generation?
Hey guys, I've been awol a while but I'm here to report progress on my purportive[sic] discovery.
So Max, if you're listening ─ I'm coming close to understanding the mechanism of what happened that balmy June morning in '94.
And I'm just on the verge of getting some serious expertise on my side.
The corona discharge method for ozone generation, in use since Van Marum's work in 1783 on his Van de Graaff generator just might, at last, be coming
to the end of its very long reign.
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Quote: Originally posted by Pulverulescent
Hi anyone, My first post, and I'm putting it here because I have a "thing" about ozone.
Some time ago, I produced ozone (apparently?) by passing unsmoothed dc through a plat/ir wire. The wire was to be used as anode for perchlorate synth
and I'd been checking its conductivity the lazy way.
The idea had been to pass currents of increasing density through the alloy to see how many watts I could get without burning the bakelite cell-cover.
The psu was two battery chargers in parallel and all switches were out of their housings. The alloy wire was 500mm in length and 0.5mm thick.
Intending to begin with the lowest density current, I connected the wire to the terminals which were fairly thick copper wires twisted round the ends
of the alloy wire so that the wire was stretched horizontally between them. Because of the confused arrangement of the switches I inadvertently
selected max power, and swiched on.
The wire instantly went whitely incandescent and sagged visibly so I dived for the off-switch. I reset the psu for min density and again switched on.
No glowing this time but visible convection currents were seen rising from the wire.
Suddenly there was a strong smell of ozone and it seemed as intense as that from a generator I'd made years before from an nst, small window-panes and
ulufoil.
On smelling ozone, my heart sank, thinking I'd got an arcing short in a primary coil.
On not finding any arcing, I put my facial ozone-detection sensor close to the alloy wire and found that the smell was coming off the wire itself. My
reaction then was, "this is interesting but there's a rocket waiting for nh4clo4 and you can get back to this ozone thing later. I had to turn it off
quickly anyway,because the rectifiers were at, near or above their operating limits. Setting up the e-cell required cutting the alloy wire into short
lengths and so, the ozone thing went on the back-burner for yonks.
When, later, I got to thinking about the anomaly I realised I might have stumbled on something useful. I purchased a new (expensive) alloy wire to
reproduce the "effect". If I'd succeeded you'd've heard all about it, already.
Basically, my lack of knowledge destroyed the second wire. I used steel croc-clips on the alloy and this caused fe ions to migrate onto the alloy
surface, causing extensive black staining, and poisoning the catalyst. I'd figured that ozone was produced by electron-induced desorption of oxygen
adlayers as 0, forming ozone by recombination.
The only other way ozone could have been produced would be by reduction of mixed oxides of plat/ir, formed by the high temps, but in that case only
traces of ozone would be expected and I remember the smell being quite intense, and sustained. Around this time, while browsing, I found a paper,
titled, "Electron-induced Synthesis of Ozone in a Dioxygen Matrix" by Lacombe et al. The abstract is still available under that title.
The inferences in that paper seemed to suggest that ozone *can* be produced efficiently by a form of electro-catalysis---on platinum crystals. The
work had been done under uhv and low temp conditions to investigate the occurrence of ozone in spectra from some asteroid or satellite.
I haven't, yet, been able to reproduce the effect, but I'm not done trying.
I'll have another alloy wire sometime this year, but a variac is also needed.
Any similarities to junk-science are unwelcome and unavoidable.
Ozone synthesis by e-catalysis would be efficient (c/d generators are inherently inefficient), use low voltges (<10v), eliminate the nox problem in
air and allow the production of any concentration of ozone.
The entire thing may hinge on the fact that dioxygen is paramagnetic.
So, have I "sparked" interest in any cranial receptacles out there?
After this, thoughts of patents are well and truly out-the-door! But, C'est la vie!
[Edited on 9-9-2018 by hissingnoise]
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WGTR
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The work function of platinum is fairly high, even more than tungsten, but it also varies depending on which crystal facet is being measured. Perhaps
by heating it initially, you helped "activate" it. Or, perhaps heating the wire white-hot initially wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Metals
that are very hot emit electrons, and some trace impurities can make this happen at non-incandescent temperatures. If you had enough potential
difference between your heated platinum wire and some other nearby thing, it's possible that you were just ionizing the air a little bit. The "nearby
thing" may even by the other end of the heated wire.
An easier way to test this might be to have one power supply dedicated to heating your platinum/iridium filament, and another power supply that
applies voltage between the filament and some nearby metal collector. This is basically a vacuum tube diode, except without the vacuum. The filament
would be negative, and the collector positive, although you should try both polarities just for fun. As the filament heats up, a current meter placed
in series with the collector supply should start registering a small amount of current (uA, mA?) when the wire is hot enough, and if you have enough
voltage at the collector.
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Sulaiman
International Hazard
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From the Wikipedia article on ozone;
"Ozone can also be produced from oxygen at the anode of an electrochemical cell. This reaction can create smaller quantities of ozone for research
purposes."
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hissingnoise
International Hazard
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Registered: 26-12-2002
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Mood: Pulverulescent!
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Indeed, electrolytic ozone can be produced in higher concentration than C/D ozone but the method is far less efficient than C/D.
Shortly after it was identified in the late 1800s, ozone was detected when Pt wires were heated but only in trace amounts ─ evidently, TPD produces
ozone which is mostly decomposed but traces escape even though the temp. of the metal is far above that at which ozone decomposes.
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Texium
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Thread Moved
27-11-2023 at 12:30 |
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