RE: Liquid Layered Capacitors

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Rich & DJ" <rdj@xxxxxxxxxxxx>




I have been away from the list for a few days so this note is a little
late. I've been reading your post and more power to you. I like to hand
make as much as I can also, I have built a 12Kv variable plate and
loading capacitors for a RF amp so I understand the feeling of making
your own. One of my coils had a Geek Group bucket cap, cheap and it
works but it is not as efficient as my latest MMC set up. In the long
run a MMC is the cheapest way to go after a bucket salt water cap, plus
there is no mess and you can get more bank in a small space and much
less loss.

	Rich , from the middle of Missouri


On 11/26/06, Tesla list <<mailto:tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>tesla@xxxxxxxxxx >
wrote:
Original poster: "Breneman, Chris" <<mailto:brenemanc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
brenemanc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hello,

I'm new to building tesla coils, and am trying to get my first one
built.  The problem is that I have very little money available to
spend on materials.  The main thing I'm trying to get now is a
capacitor for the primary circuit, and it looks like my best option
is to build one.  I've seen a number of designs for homemade
capacitors, but came up with one myself, and was wondering if anyone
has tried it, or if there is any inherent problem in the design.
I was thinking that the most efficient and easy-to-build designs were
liquid capacitors where at least one of the plates is a liquid such
as salt water.  The most common design of a liquid capacitor seems to
be filling bottles with the solution and putting them all in a vat
with another conductive solution.  But isn't this wasting space due
to the large plates?  The best space-savers seem to be layered
capacitors, which also seem to be pretty efficient (from what I've
read), but the recurring problem is apparently that the solids don't
get extremely close contact with each other.  So I got thinking ...
what if a layered liquid capacitor could be built?  Or more like
liquids that could dry.
Here's one specific design idea that I had: Inside of some kind of
bottle, put a small amount of salt water, then a layer of olive oil
as a dielectric.  Olive oil will float on top of the water and
generally has a higher freezing point than water
(<http://www.oliveoilsource.com/olive_chemistry_freezing.htm>http://www.
oliveoilsource.com/olive_chemistry_freezing.htm)
so it

Thanks,
Crispy