chemalloy?

[brian]

[BEMET]

Chemaloy is covered in a thread in the electrolysis section.

A pcv separator/filter did not effect my milage until I started adding gasoline to it and essentially used it like a vapor carburator.

[OgreOwner]

Chemalloy is a welding rod that was patented in the late 1950's. The patent gives instructions for making a 100 lb batch. The claim that intrigues me is that, if some of the rod is left in water for a while, bubbles will begin to form. Bubbled that burn.

My brain says make that into a wire. Weave the wire into a screen. Mount the screen on a thin frame. Stack frames up so that there is a lot screen in a little bit of area. Put the stack in a tank of water and see how much gas evolves over time. How much screen would it take to keep an engine running under load?

Anybody got a foundry that can handle a 100 lb melt and the experience to follow the instructions in the patent? He claims that there are lots of little explosions... I am approaching a foundry that does a lot of bronze castings to see if he will melt and pour me a batch.

2796345 and 2927856 are the patent numbers. Put them into the input box at http://www.pat2pdf.org and get a pdf file of the patent for free.

(WARNING! http://www.pat2pdf.com is a site that does the same thing for money - so watch the endings you use!)

Ogre

[topothemtn]

Brian, can you tell us any more about your pcv filter/seperator? Do you have any pics of it or how it is made/works?

Thanks for any info on this unit.

[sparkgap]

Last year, someone was selling chemalloy rods on ebay for like $9.95 and I bought one. In distilled water it did nothing, in tap water it would produce a few bubbles every once and a while, in NaOH it produced bubbles continuously but after 24 hours production would wane and there was some pitting and you have to resand to get bubbles going again.

My hypothesis is that the aluminum in the chemalloy is being consumed by the NaOH to give off hydrogen gas much the same way "raney nickle" is made only much slower.

from wikipedia:
Raney nickel is a solid catalyst composed of fine grains of a nickel-aluminium alloy, used in many industrial processes. It was developed in 1926 by American engineer Murray Raney[1] as an alternative catalyst for the hydrogenation of vegetable oils in industrial processes. More recently it is used as a heterogeneous catalyst in a variety of organic syntheses, most commonly for hydrogenation reactions.

Raney nickel is produced when a block of nickel-aluminium alloy is treated with concentrated sodium hydroxide. This treatment, called "activation", dissolves most of the aluminium out of the alloy. The porous structure left behind has a large surface area, which gives high catalytic activity. A typical catalyst is around 85-percent nickel by mass, corresponding to about two atoms of nickel for every atom of aluminium. The aluminium which remains helps to preserve the pore structure of the overall catalyst.

[mrdovie]

Instead of melting and extruding wire from chemalloy, why not just mill it into a metal shaving like Brillo pads. The right cutter blade could turn a rod into a shaving. I am planning to try a Stainless steel pad as an electrode for a battery soon.