At 11:56 AM 6/3/2010, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Air would just dilute the otherwise stoichiometric mix of gasses which naturally results from electrolysis.
Well, the mix would not be stoichiometric, ordinarily. It might still be explosive.
There will be too much oxygen, unless some means is provided to remove some of it. The original gas-loading will evolve much more oxygen than dueterium gas, so the original headspace will be, I'd guess, mostly the original air plus oxygen. Replacing the original air with, say, nitrogen or an inert gas could help. Then, as the palladium is loaded, the evolved gases will shift toward a stoichiometric mixture. But the surplus oxygen from the beginning will remain (unless removed). The recombiner will recombine the deuterium gas as evolved, depending on its characteristics.
I've thought, if I wanted to do some kind of closed cell, of using a fuel cell as a recombiner, which would then provide a current as a measure of the level of recombination....
If I'm going to do some kind of closed cell, it will probably be very small, designed to explode without harm, should that happen. I'm thinking of very small calls anyway, for other reasons.
Imagine a sealed electrolytic cell, with something in it (or communicating with it, all of which must then be able to handle high pressure) which will react with oxygen, and bind it to a solid form, efficiently. What would build up would be deuterium pressure. Wouldn't that be interesting? Would it facilitate loading?
But I'm also suspecting that the chemistry of this (something that would react strongly with oxygen but that would not at the same time catalyze recombination) might be difficult.
