{"id":365,"date":"2016-04-13T18:29:41","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T18:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/?p=365"},"modified":"2016-04-13T18:29:41","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T18:29:41","slug":"pine-sap-electrodes-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":"Pine Sap Electrodes Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

The saga continues with my charcoal electrode . . .<\/p>\n

My next experiment was to try an make the water container itself into the anode for the battery. I started by forming a box out of stainless steel mesh:<\/p>\n

\"mesh_box\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I then combined\u00a0activated carbon with pine sap in a 2:1 mixture over the stove, and formed it into the mesh box:<\/p>\n

\"box_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I was hopeful this would would work, but unfortunately its resistance was never lower than\u00a030K Ohms between the mesh and any inside surface. I initially thought this might be due to the mixture being too thick, or the stainless steel mesh being too open.<\/p>\n

Later on I realized that letting the heated pine rosin\u00a0and the activated carbon\u00a0sit for too long was causing the carbon to become oversaturated with the non-conductive rosin. Anywhere more\u00a0than 30 seconds and the carbon starts to do what it does best – absorb!<\/p>\n

\"As<\/a>
As soon as the carbon becomes glossy, it has absorbed too much sap to conduct well enough for my battery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since I was having so much trouble getting a conductive mixture, I went back to experimenting with simple electrodes.<\/p>\n

I went back to the tighter steel mesh and tried sprinkling the carbon over the sap instead of mixing them together:<\/p>\n

\"no_filings_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"oversaturated_electrode\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This brought the resistance down significantly, but it was still to high:<\/p>\n

\"high_resistance\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At this point I was ready to give up completely on using the\u00a0pine rosin. I decided to give it one more shot, and mix something conductive with the rosin.<\/p>\n

I cut up some steel wool into small bits and mixed it with the melted rosin:<\/p>\n

\"cutting_filings\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I put the steel mesh in first, then added the steel mesh and rosin:<\/p>\n

\"take1_filings\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then sprinkled the carbon on top. This time I removed the mesh almost immediately and pressed the carbon granules by rolling them with a pipe before the sap cooled back down:<\/p>\n

\"take1_charcoal\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"take1_electrode_rolled\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Success! I was now getting closer to 10-30 Ohms between the back mesh and the charcoal.<\/p>\n

\"electrode_section\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"take1_electrode\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally I was able to power an LED array without any boost circuitry by using three separate cells wired in series with the LED’s. I am only using ten LEDs in parallel. No resistors or anything else.<\/p>\n

\"take1_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I went home an tried the cells with the LEDs I ordered for the project (more on that later).<\/p>\n

\"miso_3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My batteries kept close to 100lumens of LEDs lit the whole night! The only byproduct was that the steel turned the water brown. I am hoping by covering the steel mesh with the sap completely that this effect will be diminished.<\/p>\n

\"miso_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For now I’m very happy with the result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The saga continues with my charcoal electrode . . . My next experiment was to try an make the water container itself into the anode for the battery. I started by forming a box out of stainless steel mesh: I then combined\u00a0activated carbon with pine sap in a 2:1 mixture over the stove, and formed … Continue reading Pine Sap Electrodes Part II<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project","category-spring-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aaronparsekian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}