Re: water as spark gap dielectric

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

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

At 03:08 PM 4/17/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Original poster: "Mark Fergerson by way of Terry Fritz 
><teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <mfergerson1-at-cox-dot-net>
>
>Tesla list wrote:
>>Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H by way of Terry Fritz 
>><teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com>
>
>>What type of material were they using for electrodes????
>>They may have been using some type of exotic metal.  I think that during
>>heavy current arcing, the material
>>may break down enough to leak material or other oxides into the water thus
>>ionizing the water and ruining the
>>spark gap.
>
>   For that matter, what was the enclosure made of, not to mention the 
> pumps, plumbing, etc. (many potential sources of dissolving more ions 
> into the water)? AIUI DeIonized water is notoriously difficult to keep 
> DI, otherwise we'd all be using it.

The paper doesn't give much in the way of details. The photographs show 
things made of plastic.


>   Is some kind of continuous-flow deionization system feasible? How 
> complicated would that be?

Fairly simple.. it's just a pair of ion exchange resin cartridges (or both 
anion and cation resins combined in one cartridge)...

Not cheap though (at least in the budget realm comparable to scrounging NSTs )

McMaster Carr has nonpressure cartridges for $85 that go to a resistivity 
of 1 Mohm-cm .. see page 439 in the catalog


>   Mark L. Fergerson
>
>