Re: Nitrogen VS Compressed air quenching

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

Original poster: "Arpit Thomas" <arpit-at-inzo-dot-org> 

wow, thats interesting. Now what could it be about nitrogen that provides 
better quenching? could it be the fact tehre is less oxygen to react with 
or something? IT seems to me that if nitrogen is much better than 
compressed air, you could save a bit of time carting a heavy tank back and 
forth if you made a circulating system for the nitrogen. a vacuum cleaner 
blower would be connected to the spark gap, and the exhauset of the spark 
gap ( this is all happening in a moderately large chamber)  then goes 
through some metal pipe which cools it, and then goes into the a resevoir, 
such as an old water heater, then goes back to the blower. YOud fill the 
heater up with low pressure (2 atmospheres or so? ) nitrogen, and then let 
it last for ages :)

How's carbon dioxide for quenching? I pinched an old (bit rusty) water 
heater made in 1988 off another house in my street which was going to be 
demolished, and carried it home. I'm using it as an air tank, and might use 
it to power an air blast gap. Another potential use would be to put some 
chemicals in which would react and generate carbon dioxxide at a pressure 
of about 6 or 7 atmospheres. I'd then use that to blast the gap :)

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 2/05/2004 at 4:42 PM Tesla list wrote:

 >Original poster: "john cooper" <tesla-at-tesla-coil-dot-com>
 >
 >I've added photos of my prototype nitrogen manifold to my website, here's
 >the link:
 >
 >http://www.tesla-coil-dot-com/bipolar.htm
 >
 >They're at the bottom of that page.  There's a photo of it installed in
 >the
 >original cabinet and two close-ups of the manifold that I just took
 >today.  For quenching ability the nitrogen is extremely effective while
 >compressed air is barely noticeable, apples and oranges.  FWIW a 42 cubic
 >foot bottle costs about 14.00 to fill and lasts for two 8 to 10 minute
 >runs, the bottle and regulator were around 400.00