Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> At 07:31 PM 4/14/2007, Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: "Breneman, Chris" <brenemanc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>I'm not sure if ice will conduct electricity, but even if it doesn't, the key issue would be to keep it ice. Any melting would result in some conductive path, so it would have to be kept under a low temperature, requiring more power and complexity. I don't think this would be worthwhile unless ice had amazingly superior dielectric properties.
Water has a high epsilon, but ice, because the molecules are frozen into a lattice, does not.
Pure water is used for HV pulse capacitors and transmission lines, but as has been pointed out, it onlyworks for very short pulses (nanoseconds) where there is insufficient time for the ions to move.