Plasma, Flybacks, RF Burns and Exploding Transisters

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Dec 2006 10:55:41 -0500) it happened default wrote in :

Impressive, I still have a Polaroid somewhere, but the cassettes were expensive. One would need one of those flurescent screens and put a webcam on it.

That is EXACTLY what I need to do, simply create free radicals (of N actually) to increase catalyst effectiveness.

The energy needed to annihilate the exhaust with a plasma is more than is generated by the diesel engine it is supposed to be treating (or close enough)

Thoughts? Help? Direction?

Plasma-Assisted Combustion

Gasoline, diesel, and turbine engines could soon burn cleaner or be more fuel efficient through the application of Plasma Assisted Combustion, a technology originated and developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and now poised to enter the marketplace.

The Laboratory has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with PerriQuest Defense Research Enterprises, LLC to advance the technology for commercial refinement and implementation. PerriQuest, based in Meriden, CT, Los Alamos, and Idaho National Laboratory are collaborating on the research and development of Plasma Assisted Combustion, under a licensing agreement with Los Alamos, for turbine and internal combustion engine applications.

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Build a Tesla coil - something like the compact version used in the X-ray machine and mount the HV end inside the reactor with some needle points to discharge the coil and produce corona.

Check out the link I just finished posting to this topic - they are using short pulses of rectified high voltage to deform and break molecules before they go into the combustion chamber.

Plasma-Assisted Combustion

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See, all of the designs shown in the above link are EXACTLY what I need, what I am talking about. And each drawing has a part that says "hook up plasma generator here" or a box labeled "plasma generator"

THAT IS WHAT I DO NO KNOW HOW TO MAKE!!!!! The electronics to make the plasma!

There is no component that I know of called a plasma generator. These things are developed after a fair amount of experimenting and trial and error. It is a hobby with a lot of us - there's some art involved.

So you have to build what you want or adapt something to work.

Your easy approach is to use the HV fly back transformer from an old TV set. The downside is they only produce 10-50 KV and you need 50 and up for decent corona discharges. Schematics are on the web for that type of device.

As CRTs have been getting shorter and more efficient the need for the old high power HV sections has decreased.. Short tube uses less acceleration voltage - and less voltage means the beam is easier to deflect. Higher efficiency phosphors means less power is needed. also safer - less radiation less need for insulation and corona control

So an old tube type large screen color TV fly back from the 50-60s would be a better candidate then a modern TV or monitor.

My guess would be that a smaller transformer could be pushed to higher power and voltage by simply driving it harder and submersing it in oil to cool and insulate it - but I haven't tried it.

Another possibility is a neon sign power supply - the modern ones are light weight and use high frequency high voltage. That is a ready made off the shelf component - and might just work.

Now back to the idea of "plasma." Plasma is ionized gas. A flame is a plasma (no electricity involved). You can generate a plasma with as low as 50 volts in the right atmosphere - but not at normal atmospheric pressure and gases.

Tesla coils are great plasma generators for atmospheric pressure. They run at around 100 KHZ (versus 15 KHZ for TVs) and can easily produce 100's of thousands of volts with a fair amount of power.

first you need to know what you need - what voltage power and frequency works best? Then you need to make it compact and rugged enough to use in your application.

You aren't going to find a black box labeled "plasma generator." That is going to take effort, some modest money, time, and knowledge.

No telling what it will take to get a plasma inside your exhaust system - that may take some experimenting. It may be easier than we think - you have a warm flammable mixture to work with.

Experiment - do something. Talking and theorizing about it is not going to get you there.

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I've been doing Polaroid X-ray imaging since the 60's. It's not news. I used type 52 Polaroid films. No special screens nor anything else are needed.

Al

On a sunny day (Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:46:09 GMT) it happened Al wrote in :

But I want live pictures.

Excellent reply, thanks.

I found this -

Which is a power supply running off 115 V, generates what I BELIEVE I will need, up to 250kV.

Your statement to "do something, not talk about it" was well taken. I was thinking of getting this, hooking it up to the exhaust design, finding exactly what works, THEN figure out how to get it with 12 volts.

OFF SUBJECT - I'm new here - One, thank you all for the input. Two, did I say something really wrong or is Eeyore the newsgroup asshole?

You really should run some numbers first to see if your idea is practical, marginal, or waaay impractical.

Not to mention doing a bit more research to avoid having to reinvent old failed wheels.

first, calculate how many cc's of gas per second a diesel engine puts out at full power.

Then estimate what percentage of plasma you need to mix to have a noticeable cleaning up effect. The number is probably between 2 and 20 percent.

Then calculate how much plasma you can make per second per watt. As a rough estimate, the old plasma tweeters used about 20 watts to make about 1CC of plasma; assume it can make that every second.

but close enough to see if the idea is anywhere near feasible.

BTW have you really burned out 300 2N3055's? That shows either extreme dedication, or something else.

I love that - I'll go with the extreme dedication. The number 300 was a frustrated sarcastic number. More like 5.

Touched on earlier, we are not generating plasma for complete thermal breakdown of the exhaust, but to create free radicals to assist the catalytec converter.

I'm buying the one off-the shelf piece for testing

No hole, he's all ass.

Crashed my computer - so I don't think I'll try to download it. I can look at the URL and they make DC supplies. High voltage low power as a rule. High frequency AC is more active for shaking things up - but you have to start somewhere.

You have to expect that not everyone on Usenet will behave the way you expect - we all bring our own biases and cultural differences to the table. Best to have a thick skin and not worry too much about it. Some times anonymity brings out the worst in people - makes them feel superior to denigrate others? .

The important thing - you can learn something from almost everyone. Name calling and slurs hinder communication.

Some of the political, file sharing, rock music groups, can be downright brutal - Someone likes Arrowsmith - 50% probability they will act asinine, classical music 2% - probably has to do with age?

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If you are really bent on using a corona discharge, you can always rig up a spark plug coil, they go clear up to 200KV for an output, and just use a string of diodes to make it DC if that's what you want.

Or you could use 3 200KV spark plug coils in a 3 phase power arrangement and have a nearly steady 150KV. The peak voltage would always be 200kv, but your constant voltage between the three seperate signals would be around 150kv to 100Kv, and so at least the much voltage would always be there.

Here's some details on the subject that include using 3 isolation transformers for each phase. I am sure you would have to adopt that to using autotransformers if you were going to use spark plug coils.

isolating ignition transformers are available, not cheap though.

True, but the over all results of using high voltage to produce plamsa is achieved. He's certain that it will happen around 45 KV, and that won't drop below 100/85KV if you look at the reference link.