High voltage ozone generation

Thread Starter

dannybeckett

Joined Dec 9, 2009
185
Hi guys, I am trying to make an ozone generator. I have a ZVS driven flyback going to a glass with tinfoil around the inside and outside. there is no hiss or corona discharge or anything. The voltage is at least 8kv. Do I need to ground one side of the flyback to get corona?
 

Thread Starter

dannybeckett

Joined Dec 9, 2009
185
ok i have discovered something strange. when i move the electrode thats attached to the outside of the glass away, it arcs to the outside foil as if the glass wasnt even there! how can the outside and inside foil be making contact? is it acting as a capacitor??
 

Thread Starter

dannybeckett

Joined Dec 9, 2009
185
yeah but i didnt think the capacitance of this setup would be enough to complely allow the 20khz signal through. i actually tested this with a scope and f.gen and there was no attenuation up to 1mhz! Im very confused lol
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
The lighting was probably in lieu of the corona. Are you pulling a vacuum in this jar? For a corona you would need to, and it wouldn't hurt to fill it with pure nitrogen (or some other gas of your choice) at extremely low pressure. Think neon tube.

Of course if you want ozone lightning is a great ozone generator. I don't think you can get a corona, unless you make the glass enclosure bigger.

Ozone, being an ion, is a good conductor.
 

PackratKing

Joined Jul 13, 2008
847
Of course if you want ozone lightning is a great ozone generator.
Hence the balderdash surrounding the "hole in the ozone layer" touted by some in the scientific community.............

God.........Remember the one that created all this..........knew what He was doing when He had lightning generate Ozone....... how many times a day does lightning strike in the atmosphere globally ?????:eek:

There is no shortage of Ozone, and Nature does not waste anything !

Maybe our concern over these things, prompting us to discover that maybe CFC's do indeed damage ozone, we are attempting to mitigate our error for the last how many years.............
We are so arrogant with our limited knowledge of what really goes on in nature, it is laughable

RE : the " Big Bang " Theory :D Global warming :rolleyes::D

boyoboy am I gonna catch hell for this one........:rolleyes::D will likely withdraw it sooner or later
 
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Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Hence the balderdash surrounding the "hole in the ozone layer" touted by some in the scientific community.............

God.........Remember the one that created all this..........knew what He was doing when He had lightning generate Ozone....... how many times a day does lightning strike in the atmosphere globally ?????:eek:

There is no shortage of Ozone, and Nature does not waste anything !

Maybe our concern over these things, prompting us to discover that maybe CFC's do indeed damage ozone, we are attempting to mitigate our error for the last how many years.............
We are so arrogant with our limited knowledge of what really goes on in nature, it is laughable

RE : the " Big Bang " Theory :D Global warming :rolleyes::D

boyoboy am I gonna catch hell for this one........:rolleyes::D will likely withdraw it sooner or later
Yep, and that is why the hole is closing. CFCs are a catalyst. Remove them and the sun will make more ozone in the upper atmosphere. Ozone is unstable, it doesn't migrate from the lower atmosphere to the upper.

To the OP, why are you wanting to create ozone anyhow?

Ever look up lifters? That is another way to do it, but be extremely careful, what you are trying to do is dangerous. The voltages are nothing to sneeze at.
 

Thread Starter

dannybeckett

Joined Dec 9, 2009
185
I just like messing with high voltage to be honest lol, have done for a long time. I have not heard of lifters, what is this? There is no gas bar air and there is no vaccum. I shoudl be able to get ozone generation however. I took the foil from the outisde of the glass odd and wrapped a wire around teh glass a few times - lots of corona and ozone. Im still perplexed as to why the thing doesnt work when the inside and the outside of the glass is completely covered in metal though.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
For a corona you need either vacuum (or low pressure gas) or distance.

Lifters use high voltages to generate thrust. The ionized gas is charged at one terminal, moves to the second at high speed, creating a jet like thrust. Google the term lifters for more info.

This subject (all of it) is skirting the edges of what is allowable on this site, I would be very careful and keep any experiments well contained. Safety is a mantra around here.
 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
Ozone, being an ion, is a good conductor.
Actually, ozone is not an ion as it is not charged. I am not sure about its electrical conductivity. It is quite unstable as a solid.

Of course, it is made conveniently at home and in the laboratory by an electric arc or corona in air or oxygen. I suspect that is what you meant in referring to it being an electrical conductor.

Some health advocates recommend ozone as a freshener for the air at home and small units are available to do that. They produce very small quantities. One nice use of ozone is to regenerate curpric chloride etching tanks for PCB's.

John
 

Thread Starter

dannybeckett

Joined Dec 9, 2009
185
I think what you are trying to say is that you need a high resistance (both being attained by distance and/or low pressure). The high resistance is created by the glass dielectric. After more experimentation I have found the perfect solution - foil lined inside the glass and a wire grid attached to the outside. This creates a boat load of corona and ozone. I tried wraping a dense coil of wire around the glass - corona was seen for a short while, then it behaved just as before -as if the glass was not there .I believe now that the problem was that there was too much surface area for the electricity to pass through - possibly lowering the resistance too much at the output... I'm still working on the hypothesis lol.
 
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retched

Joined Dec 5, 2009
5,207
Using the foil, you have a huge "skin" surface to hold a charge, and a huge area where the arc can "choose" to jump from.

By using a mesh, you dramatically reduce the amount of skin that is closest to the inner foil.

This gives you less of an area to charge and to dissipate the charge.

If you used only 1 wire wrapped around the outside of the jar, you will see what I mean.
 

DangerousBill

Joined Jul 21, 2010
30
Hi guys, I am trying to make an ozone generator. I have a ZVS driven flyback going to a glass with tinfoil around the inside and outside. there is no hiss or corona discharge or anything.
Are you using oxygen or air as the feed? In a corona discharge in air, you'll also get nitrogen oxides, which have different properties and their own toxic properties.

UV will generate pure ozone in carbon-filtered air or oxygen.

Trusting in advance you've got proper safety circumstances set up. Once you've had a faceful of 30% ozone and survive, you don't forget in a hurry.

Dangerous Bill
 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
How did you make 30% ozone. Details, details.

I seriously doubt there is any chance the OP will/can make 30% ozone at atmospheric pressure, room temperature, and with air.

Edit: BTW, the UV needed to make ozone is probably far more dangerous to a young/inexperienced investigator than what he is doing here.

John
 

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
Maybe our concern over these things, prompting us to discover that maybe CFC's do indeed damage ozone, we are attempting to mitigate our error for the last how many years.............
We are so arrogant with our limited knowledge of what really goes on in nature, it is laughable


I assume most remember when they took away our R-12 refrigerant because CFCs were supposedly damaging the ozone layer. Sunlight was breaking it down into elemental chlorine that was upsetting the O3 structure ... etc etc.

The odd thing is that R-12 is about 40 times as dense as air so if you release it it goes looking for the lowest point it can find such as a sewer drain in the shop or it just seeps down into the ground. Even when separated into its elemental components the chlorine and fluorine are far heavier than air and as reactive as they are they'll combine with most anything they can find first - including simple humidity in the air.

On a scalar basis we really didn't use that much of the stuff anyway. Yet when they banned it we also lost one of the best electronic contact cleaners that was ever made - Blue Shower. You can't find a decent contact cleaner anywhere anymore unless you want to spring for DeOxit which is still almost as good as it once was but still expensive as heck.

They complain about the mercury level in discarded fluorescent lamps yet they contibute virtually nothing to the existing mercury level as 98% of it comes from still active volcanos.

In essence, regardless of their mercury level, they have a reverse effect from what the so-called ecologists are trying to make a scare out of. A fluorescent lamp easily uses about 20% of the electricity it would take to get the same amount of light from most convential methods which means less coal is burned by the power plants and coal emits a lot of mercury.

I do like the way all those e-mails were exposed that painted out a pretty clear picture - most of these "ecologists" were just doing the studies for the grant and research money.

I could easily go on and on about the stupidity and real truths behind most of these scares. Didn't anyone find it a coincidence that R-12 was discontinued rght around the same time DuPont's patent rights were running out? Same thing just happened with R-22 as of this year.
 

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
Hi guys, I am trying to make an ozone generator. I have a ZVS driven flyback going to a glass with tinfoil around the inside and outside. there is no hiss or corona discharge or anything. The voltage is at least 8kv. Do I need to ground one side of the flyback to get corona?
Seems to me http://www.goldmine-elec.com was selling some simple ozone generating circuit boards not long ago. The stuff is really pretty easy to make but danger is involved in most methods. I've got a 15W shortwave UV fluorescent tube that generates ozone like crazy when you're using it. Mine fits a standard fixture, I think it was used as a germicidal lamp at one time. I used to use it to erase the old EPROMs as if you had a big pile of them to reprogram it would easily erase dozens at a time.
 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
@Post 18 (I'm a very slow writer)

Talk about silly, as I recall, airline cabin attendants filed suit because they were exposed to excessive radiation or something. I don't remember how it came out, or even if it was news by that time.

Bottom line, I would rather deal with substances for which we have a great deal of information and can take appropriate precautions than deal with a new substitute in a bottle painted green. Particularly when that substitute is described as "space age," "technical breakthrough," "environmentally sensitive, " ad nauseam. As just two of many examples, consider odorless mineral spirits (basically kerosene) and formaldehyde replacements (long-chain saturated and unsaturated aldehydes). How long have we studied the effects of such aldehydes on humans? Has exposure data been sufficient to rule out all adverse effects at the same or lower level than formaldehyde causes nasopharyngeal carcinoma?

As an aside, I have been looking for Stoddard solvent (aka Varsol) without luck. Got some Klean Strip paint thinner for oil based paints, "made with mineral spirts." It smelled right and lo and behold, the MSDS says it is Stoddard solvent. If you are not old enough to know what that is used for, you probably don't need it. ;)

I know this is off topic (OT), but I needed a break.

John
 
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