Re: Static discharge from my air compressor

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

A well known effect with dust or other particulates.  Responsible for more
than one explosion in sites like flour mills, grain elevators, etc.

Essentially, you made a supersonic Kelvin water dropper....

Each drop carries a bit of charge, and the plethora of drops acts like the
belt in a Van deGraaff generator.

There was a paper by Vollrath in the 30's that described some measurements
and systems. It's of note because it's reprinted in Ford's book Homemade
Lightning.  There are also a number of papers by French researchers on this
technique for high voltage generation.

An acquaintance was working on a HV generator using condensing steam
droplets, but I don't know if he ever got it working. He was attempting to
make 1 MV at 10-20 mA DC, and getting 20-30 HP from a steam boiler is easy.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 8:44 PM
Subject: Static discharge from my air compressor


> Original poster: "terry oxandale by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <toxandale-at-cei-dot-net>
>
>
>
> Just thought I'd share this with you guys. Tonight, just prior to bed, I
> went under the house to drain the water out of the compressor tank (I have
a
> car project too). Anyway, the tank drains out a 2 foot piece of 3/4" PVC
> pipe with a valve in the middle. I opened the valve (125 psi), and the F15
> in afterburner took off. Just after I opened it up, I was surprised to see
> several 4" to 6" racing sparks circling around the end of the PVC pipe. It
> only last about 2 seconds, but non-the-less, it happened. I guess the only
> reason I've not seen this before was because this is the first time I've
> done this in the dark (light bulb burnt out). The best way to describe the
> effect was like in the first Star Trek movie when V-JER was shooting at
the
> Klingon ships and the result was that the ship was covered in lightning
like
> discharges before being destroyed. The effect wasn't as good as my coils,
> but the surprise was well worth the experience. Now back you our regularly
> scheduled program.
>
>
>