More experiment with the APE:
Electrical power from the plasma ?
created on January 17, 2006 - JLN Labs - March 2, 2006
Toutes les informations et schémas sont publiés gratuitement ( freeware ) et sont destinés à un usage personnel et non commercial
All informations and diagrams are published freely (freeware) and are intended for a private use and a non commercial use.

The Asymmetrical Plasma Electrolysis (APE) is a simple experiment which can be easily performed with few material and uses a common lab equipement. In this page, you will find additional datas and an interesting and simple experiment which demonstrates that the Asymmetrical Plasma Electrolysis phenomenon can be used to light an incandescent lamp when it is connected (in serie with a capacitor) across its electrodes. This setup uses the negative conductance property of the plasma during a high voltage electrolysis process to build up a negative resistance oscillator which is able to light an incandescent lamp.

To see how to build the basic APE setup, I recommend you to visit the basic APE experiment ( here ).

The borosilicate beaker is filled with 400 mL of demineralized water and Potassium Carbonate ( K₂CO₃ ). The electrolyte solution commonly used is 0.2 molar ( 0.2 M ).

A simple incandescent lamp (12V 5W ) in serie with a capacitor (220nF/1000V), is connected across the electrodes.

When the voltage is increased the current climbs very quickly to a high value (see the photo above),
there are strong sparks and discharges in the APE but the lamp doesn't light...

When the voltage reaches about 300 V DC, the current drops dramatically to its lower value while the incandescent
lamp brights very strongly. At this state, the APE is tuned at its best efficient regime...

During the experiment, the input voltage, the current and the brightness of the lamp (measured with a photodiode) have
been logged with the Scopemeter FLUKE 123.

.

The APE device works like a non-linear relaxation oscillator (or a negative resistance oscillator) driven
by the plasma discharge process used in the negative conductance region.

Comments from Jean-Louis Naudin : As you may notice through all the experiments presented in this web site, the APE (aka CFR) design is very interesting because it is able to produce an useable electrical power and a great amount of excess heat from the plasma discharge.

Interesting documents to be read :

• About Negative Resistance from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• The Van der Pol Negative Resistance Oscillator by R.V. Jones - University of Harvard

• About Negative Resistance Oscillators by the University of St. Andrews

• Non linear phenomena in plasma as a consequence of self-organisation by M. Sanduloviciu, E. Lozneanu and S. Popescu

• Negative resistance revived by Lloyd Butler VK5BR - Amateur Radio, November 1995.

• How to build and test yourself a Negative Differential Resistance Oscillator by JL naudin

Click on the picture to download the video ( 7.8 Mb )

Click on the picture to download the video ( 9 Mb )

For more informations, please contact Jean-Louis Naudin : JNaudin509@aol.com

See also :

Do It Yourself: The APE experiment

return to the CFR page

visitors since January 17, 2006