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A quick update on progress with this cell.

The kitchen ladles turned out to be impresive quality, Indian SS is way better than I expected.

Here’s a pic of the surface of a ladle that has been subjected to over 48 hours use, alongside a new one.

The 48 hours were at about 3 amps, temperatures up to about 180F, and as there were only 4 plates (3 cells) voltage was about 4v. This stuff shows less degradation than the 304 stainless I normally use, at a fraction of the price.

Anyway, I was pleased enough with that test, and have bought several more of these ladles to test further.

My next step was to rebuild the unit with 7 plates in total to give 6 cells so that each cell would draw about 2 volts. Again, the whole unit has been wrapped with tape to reduce stray voltage. The tape glue does break down in use, but I have minimised that by cutting 2 circles of very thin plastic to go under the tape on each side. I also used cable ties to secure the tape ends and stop the electrolyte creeping under the tape.

As you can see in the video, this little unit produces a decent amount considering it is only drawing 3 amps.

Next step will be to hook it up to a car battery as the laptop power supply I’m using maxes out at 4.5 amps and I don’t want to cook it. If all goes well with that test at around 10 - 12 amps, I will then have the challenge of finding or making a suitable container so that I can measure the output properly. Current thoughts are to cut off most of the handles and encase the circular parts in glassfibre resin, with tubes top and bottom for electrolye and gas flow. That way I can use an external reservoir and keep the unit small.