Least Corrosion Metal When in Salt Water

Look for a corrosion table.

Metals resistant to salt water.

Corrosion Control: Galvanic Corrosion and Stainless Steel

This is not rocket science.

Gold, Platinum and Tantalum resist salt water corrosion very well. Running electric current in salt water can produce plating and hydrolysis problems.

Basically, This is what I want to try.

http://saltwaterdummyload.blogspot.com/

And thought if I'm gonna build it to try, may as well try to make it last as long as possible?

Joe WB9SBD

Use carbon. You can make your own.

You can drill out a dowel and thread a lag bolt into it. Just don't drill through, make a blind hole.

Then put the lag bolt in and place the whole assembly into a clean empty paint can and set the lid on it. Only set the lid on, don't seal it. Then place the whole thing over a flame and bake it until there is no flame from the syngas coming off the lid. Let cool but don't remove the lid.

What you should have when it is cool is a carbon electrode with a bolt to connect your leads too.

Another thought,,,,

The water here is sooo mineral poor, when using a vaporizer, everyone around here has to add either some salt or baking soda to the water to get them to boil at all.

I wonder what would happen in I used baking soda instead of salt in the water and the possible corrosional differences?

That's a simple test with a hand held meter.

Multimeter experiments with electricity and water

Things will be far less corrosive with baking soda, since over time, the baking soda will release some carbon dioxide, and the solution becomes more alkaline, less corrosive, whereas salt added as sodium chloride will become only more corrosive as the water evaporates.

The noble metals are all OK with salt water, some stainless steels (but not all) are good with high chloride content. Titanium metal I believe to be stable in salt water under electrically conducting situations.

The patina on the copper cladding on the stature of liberty inhibits further corrosion.

and that has to be exposed to a LOT of salt he he he

...and prohibiting access to it reduces erosion.

Carbon and Uranium are good candidates.

Hi Joe,

Does it have to be metal? What of a carbon rod, like the kind you find in vaporisers these days? Hell, just use the guts of a Vicks vaporiser for the dummy load. Everything you need is right there, and it's cheap: $14 at Walmart. Modify as necessary for the coax and so forth.

ya know? thats an interesting idea! The Vaporizer! Just take off the 120 volt line cord add in a pig tailed piece of Coax, with a connector on the end, and there ya go. hmmmmm?

Easy peasy. A bit safer, too. I didn't see any provision to vent the jar in that link. A couple hundred watts and that water is going to get pretty warm. The author should at least poke a few holes in the lid.

73s

and the vaporizer was designed to operate with BOILING water, so you know the construction materials will handle the heat.

hmmmm

Yep, though you may not wish to actually boil the water. All those bubbles and your load impedance will be all over the map.

If you go the vaporiser route, you'll notice there's a plastic 'shroud' that surrounds the electrodes:

* a small central chamber open at the top to admit the electrodes (and vent the steam) and a small opening at the bottom to admit water from the reservoir;

* an inner concentric cylinder which is fully open at the bottom but closed at the top to trap air (so as to thermally insulate the hot central chamber from the cooler reservoir water)

and, finally,

* an outer concentric cylinder, fully open at the bottom and having a small hole at the top through which 'splatter' and condensation from the unit's vent drains back into the reservoir.

The central chamber is small to minimise the volume of water through which the electric current flows, concentrating the heat and boiling the water - but in this app we don't want the water to boil at all. What to do?

Drill a hole in the top of the inner cylinder so it will vent the trapped air and fill with water. This will help conduct heat from the central chamber into the cooler reservoir water. Ideally you would eliminate the shroud entirely, but it serves to hold everything in place and to protect the user from electric shock.

Use distilled water. Don't use tap water as mineral buildup from that will screw with your load impedance.

After looking into this it seems that 1/8 teaspoon of salt was added to almost two gallons of water to achieve a VSWR of 1.1:1. That's not going to be very corrosive.

You'll be far better off using something like potassium hydroxide (lye) than using table salt.

Two problem with using salt.

First, even a small amount will lead to corrosion when voltage drives current through the metal....(copper would go very rapidly, stainless somewhat slower, carbon would be great, as would anything gold or platinum plated).

Second problem with using table salt is that even at low voltages chlorine (along with hydrogen) gas will be produced via electrolysis.

A low concentration of a strong base is a decent option.

baking soda is in, salt is out, really.

We produce valves for navy out of naval bronze a us spec for valves and xposed to constant sea water we also put on deep sea rigs if you want spec write me,

That could be a silicon bronze alloyed....

or use a copper nickel alloyed. Its what sea chests are made of.

Naval bronze, I have spec we use on warships and offshore wells I have a spec.

Silicon would also work.

Copper Nickel alloys are used in seawater applications to avoid corrosion.

We machined many cupronickel parts when doing work for Newport News Shipbuilding.

The largest were main seawater valves used in subs and others used in other small hand operated valves.

Attach a block of magnesium to what ever is exposed to the salt water. Magnesium draws the corrosive properties in the water to it. 316 Stainless Steel is corrosive resistant.

As an amateur, you are probably looking for 50, 75 or 300 ohms. That will be the determining issue for the electrolyte. And that may/will change as it decomposes and the electrodes develop O2 ,H_2, CL bubbles.

I did the same thing to measure the output of 720 watts of solar panels, worked quite well. I was able to isolate a bad panel.

As stated before, around here, the water is sooo lacking of any minerals that people have to add salt or baking soda to the vaporizer water to get them to work.

Now if the soda works in a vaporizer, think it would in this situation too? and then possibly less corrosive too?

Joe WB9SBD

Wish we had that problem - our water here has too many dissolved minerals. Here's a pic of my new vaporiser's electrodes after three days' operation using tap water. Mind you these are graphite rods which are normally a little darker than a pencil lead:

As to your second question, anything that works in a vaporiser will work in your app too. Not sure what baking soda will do to the electrodes but I know the newer graphite electrodes last much longer than the old-style metal ones did even when using salt in the water.

I suppose most of that can be removed with vinegar. Around here, we get little or no calcium carbonate, but rather we get this stuff that has a composition resembling Portland cement.

Use rain water for your dummy load, mister OP. Or as Mr. Westman pointed out, there are the "Cantenna" loads.

Yep. Vinegar. I reckon I use enough of the stuff here to keep the vinegar industry afloat. This whole area (central Texas) is rife with limestone deposits.

Fortunately the OP doesn't have this problem. He mentioned that his tap water is so mineral-free that he has to add baking soda to make his vaporiser work.

Right on. You Klingons do have a way of making a point! LOL

He's actually a Romulan. Get your alien races right!

Yep, Romulan it is. Nero (played by Eric Bana).

Look at his ears. You can tell he just got off the phone with his ex.

Normally he looks like this:

The big problem with saltwater is chloride ion. That's what causes the corrosion.

So you can pick any ionic compound that is highly soluble in water for this purpose, and look at the components to see your result. One thing to keep in mind (if it matters) is that a weak electrolyte such as carbonate ion has a disassociation value that increases with the concentration, leading to higher loading requirements than a strong electrolyte. And if there is any acid loading that could push the equilibrium to bicarbonate, that has different solubility factors that could lead to scaling.

A strong base- well, just keep in mind the safety of what you're working with and the effect on soft metals. My own preference would be for something like sodium sulfate, sodium acetate or vinegar (as already mentioned!).

Why are you worried about corrosion? Drain, rinse and dry off the electrodes after you are done load testing. If your operation requires a permanent load then buy one that won't suffer from evaporation or corrosion changes to the load impedance.

A so-called 'Cantenna' (antenna in a can) dummy load. These have been around for decades and you can probably find them on eBay.

true on the Cantenna,

But we were thinking dirt cheap here, do same job, yet possibly cost almost nothing!

Yes, I understand that and, for somebody who likes to tinker, just buying something off-the-shelf isn't nearly as much fun.

Experiment! Try different things: baking soda, salt, lye (sodium hydroxide), and so forth, and note its effect on the electrodes. Try graphite electrodes or some of the other materials suggested. Measure the resistance and see how various concentrations change it.

Really, unless you're going to run this as a dummy load for hours on end, I don't think it really makes much difference what the solution's effect is on the electrodes so long as the load impedance doesn't vary too much. If the electrodes corrode it's cheap enough to replace them, no? A complete vaporiser (if that's the route you go) is only fourteen bucks at Walmart. Hell, these days you pay that much at McDonald's for a couple of lousy burgers and drinks.

Exactly!

Who knows, maybe you will find excess heat, and have to publish the next LENR paper.

That only works in Utah.

Uh, you might want to look again. The morons professors at MIT and CIT and also TAMU that allegedly attempted to re-create the experimental results of Pons & Fleischman, did not carry out loading to the specified atomic ratio of H:Pd of higher than 0.85. That ratio can really just barely be met at atmospheric pressure, and really high ratios are only achieved in pressurized conditions.

Miles at China Lake Naval Research found excess heat 17 out of 21 times by following the procedure exactly. He even found (after very very careful isolation of the experiment from air) excess Helium and also I believe he had positive neutron trapping.

Check out Brillouin Energy Company on the web, and look at what they are talking about going public with when the COP reaches somewhere between 2-3. One Israeli professor (now at Univ. of Missouri, I think) has claimed a COP of over 25 on some experiments and had one experiment where COP was over 50. He is the only one who applies the "Superwave".

Or you can continue to remain a complete and total skeptic and ignore.

"Or you can continue to remain a complete and total skeptic and ignore."

Come now, was that really necessary? I mean, you could have asked me first, no? Asked what I actually think about LENR before concluding I am "a complete and total skeptic" and close-minded?

Had you asked, you would have discovered that I am actually quite interested in this phenom and of its underlying physics, whatever they are. For all we know our convo could have led to an interesting and productive exchange of ideas. I presume that is the purpose of this forum. Am I mistaken?

There seems to be an awful lot of hostility here. On another thread a couple of guys are fighting at the moment. Lots of sniping back and forth, ad hominem attacks and so forth. This is something I would expect to see on Facebook with its mob mentality, but not here on a professional forum. We are professionals here, yes? Or am I being too presumptuous?

Enlighten me, please, because I don't get it.

No, lower than that!

You are right, I was being a jack-dog. Sorry. I have certainly enjoyed your commentary, as entertaining and enlightening on this professional (well, at least semi-professional, since we must not take ourselves too seriously) forum.

I agree that no one knows truly what makes LENR work when it does, and most researchers on this topic find it somewhat unreliable as to when XSH (excess heat) will take place, and some are clueless really how to define and detect XSH.

I define XHS as being possibly detected by two definitions:

(1) normal caloric meaning of XSH that power applied < heat content of anything leaving the electrolysis + waste heat power recovered.

(2) seriously violent bump boiling events that throw electrolysis media all over the place (at least well above the water line of the reactor.

Thus far, I have only witnessed type (2), but I have a calorimetry set up that will assist me with assessing if type (1) is present or not.

No worries. Thanks for your reply.

https://www.coleparmer.co.uk/Chemical-Resistance

I made one in an old plastic mayonnaise jar the other day, and used Sodium Bicarbonate ( Baking Soda ) and it took maybe a teaspoon amount to make it a perfect 50 Ohm load.

From 1.8 Mhz to almost 70 MHz it has a dead flat SWR at 50 Ohms.

And learned that above it ( 70 Mhz ) when the SWR starts to rise. If less of he probes are inserted n the solution the dead flat can be gotten again. as High as I could test 170 Mhz,,, By varying the amount touching the water soda mix, a perfect match was easily obtained.

After several Days of the bare copper wires sitting in the solution, with various levels of power applied, I have noticed no discoloration or build up on thee wires in any way, So I looked up the compatibility of the copper nd the sod, and was pleasantly surprised.

CHEMICAL SELECTED : Sodium Bicarbonate

Miracle Load

Glad it worked. How much power?

Right now only 110 watts.

"Right now"?

So you've bigger plans in the works?

Ummm No,

I have an old Heathkit SB-220 that I'm re-furbishing,

It will do 1500 Watts.

Of course if I wanted to be illegal, I could build an amp around this baby,

She would make 30 kilowatt output. That would boil some water fast!

Crikey! Put that in service you'll have to get new call letters: W9QRM!

No, it would be...

Cant hear me? Wait let me turn on the Amp

CLUNK!!

"CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW!?"

Sod it! I was hoping for a loud pop, or maybe a load pop!

Now that you mention it, did the OP vent the lid? A hole or two would do. NSS?

I just did not screw the lid down tight. But I might just to see if pressure builds up or not.

I'd poke a small hole in the lid. If the lid's loose and the thing falls over when powered versus the risk when the lid's on tight and has only a small hole in it? A few drops versus a spill, especially when it's powered up? I wouldn't risk it.

yup.

will incorporate a semi pressure relief type of valve in the real non test one I make.

Bazooka bubble gum works, and the wrapper even comes with a lame cartoon featuring Bazooka Joe. Be still my heart!

Watch out for the "load pop"!

How about trying Diet Coke, Pepsi, or Fresca?

I think MythBusters got some mileage out of Mentos and Fresca?

So far soo good with this project. Adding the Sodium Bicarbonate can adjust the resistive properties of the water, taking it from a pretty good insulator, and make it have decent resitive properties.

Now I searched all over, and may have to just try it. but Mineral oil is when plain also has great insulating properties.

will the soda dissolve in mineral oil and also change it's resistive properties/

Joe

No. There will be no ionic bond dissociation with mineral oil since it has nowhere near the same dipole moment of H2O.

Awesome answer THANKS!

Joe

Not one bit. That is unless the mineral oil is emulsified enough with water that adjacent water droplets make some contact, even that is doubtful, as likely only capacitance could increase.