Graphite electrodes

[Poteet]

Graphite seems to me a better conductor of electricity than stainless and doesn't seem to have any problems with electrolyte. I'm considering building another electrolyzer using graphite electrodes. Has anybody tried this? Perhaps I'll see an improvement in effeciency. They sure aren't a cheap way to go but www.graphitestore.com has the stuff in just about any configuration you can think of and they are very accurately cut. Also, does anyone know a cheap supplier of plexiglass?

[rodney]

poteet-

I read somewhere that graphite will disolve in caustic solitions. You may want to verify this with someone else, I have used carbon graphite in KOH for short periods of time and it seemed ok to me too. Just watch out for the water turning black then you will know that you have a disintegration problem. Hope this helps .

-rodney

[duke401]

i have got some imfo where dow co. has been resurching this since the 40tys, it was some imformation that i ordered from england, what they are useing now is carbon mixed with 5% platium[sp?] an getting the best results almost twice that of s.s. but very very very pricey.
duke

[Poteet]

Ouch. I don't think platinum is in my budget. I better get some samples of different grades of the carbon graphite to do more testing too. Thanks

[hartiberlin]

Hi Bob,
are you sure, that using 2 graphite rods to do
electrolysis is releasing toxic CO gas ?
How much ?

Can it be smelled ?
Is that dangerous to do in an unvented room ?

Regards, Stefan.

[Bill]

Afternoon Gentlemen, last week I experimented with graphite with several left over pieces I had laying around, I cut 30, 2 1/2" disk, put a stainless 1/8" threaded rod up through the middle, suspended the rod inside a 32 ounce stainless steel cup. Made the cup + the graghite - . Hooked to a 12 volt battery for just a few seconds. Worked absolutley beautiful. So I took one of my reactors apart and put a disk in between each cell. I ran the reactor for about an hour. Although production was some what better, as the others stated above, the electrolyte turned very black, graphite disk did start to slowly disentergrate and when I finished there was a black sludge at the bottom of each cell. I'm sure there are other grades of graphite you can use that might be more suitable to this type of application. The graphite I use I buy in 4x4 sheets and has a thin piece of stainless steel in the middle. I use it to seal high temp/pressure steam flanges.

[hartiberlin]

The good thing with graphite is,
that you can build a very efficient electrolyzer this way:

Apply a DC pulse to the electrolyzer, so that gas is generated.
Now as thegraphite still stores ions in its mesh, you also still
have a battery ! Then just switch off the DC power supply and
recollect the voltage and amperage from this "battery" and
restore it in a capacitor. And then begin the cycle again.
This way you will need less power to drive the electrolyzer !

It could be, that this works best with one plate graphite and
the other plate magnesium based, cause then you still get the
potential difference of the 2 dissimular metals.
Magnesium should give the best voltage difference,
but might be too crackable in the solution, so it is consumed.
with 2 graphite rods it should also work pretty good and these
will not disintegrate as the plates.

Check for reference the Telos website:

http://67.76.239.187/

Regards, Stefan.

[adam666]

[chemelec]

[adam666]

[joe]

[dsimpson]

[Bob Boyce]

[thrival]

[dsimpson]