Electrostatic precipitator from a bug zapper?

A

Adam

Guest
Hi. I would like to build an electrostatic precipitator. I have a bug
zapper, and was wondering if I could just hook the leads from that to 2
large plates, and put that in front of some grounded collector plates
and a fan. I can't tell what voltage the bug zapper is using, but in
general, do bug zappers put out enough to ionize the dust coming
through? Its a zapper 40W bulb model btw, if anyone knows how much
voltage it creates.

Also, the mesh of the zapper gave me an idea-could I just straighten
out the 2 screens, and flow the air perpendicular to them? Or would
the dust lose its charge after passing the second plates?
Any advice or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Adam
 
Adam wrote:
Hi. I would like to build an electrostatic precipitator. I have a bug
zapper, and was wondering if I could just hook the leads from that to 2
large plates, and put that in front of some grounded collector plates
and a fan. I can't tell what voltage the bug zapper is using, but in
general, do bug zappers put out enough to ionize the dust coming
through? Its a zapper 40W bulb model btw, if anyone knows how much
voltage it creates.

Also, the mesh of the zapper gave me an idea-could I just straighten
out the 2 screens, and flow the air perpendicular to them? Or would
the dust lose its charge after passing the second plates?
Any advice or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Adam
Click to expand...

Hi Adam. A typical bug zapper probably puts out between 5 and 15kV. A
typical air ionizer works at around 7.5kV, so at first glance this
looks possible. But, there are gotchas:

In electrostatic air precipitation, you want DC voltage, not AC. So
on the outputs of your zapper, you'll need two 15kV-rated diodes. Once
you have a high DC voltage, you want the negative lead to be the
"emitter" and the positive lead to be the "collector." Electrons flow
from the negative to positive terminals so this is why it's not the
other way around. The emitter should be a fine wire - the smaller the
diameter and longer, the more readily ions will jump off it and into
the air. Take a long length of this wire and form a "grid" out of it.
This puts "negative ions" into the air. (Be careful not to zap
yourself, DC is very dangerous.)

As for the collector, you want a large surface area with no little to
no sharp points - the opposite of the emitter. Rounded sheets of metal
work well, like an oval shape. Flat metal sheet might work also, as
will a (fine mesh) screen. A course-mesh screen would probably not
work all that well.

Ions in the air are negatively charged. Most of these are strongly
attracted to the positive plate and "dissappear." Sometimes the
negative ions intercept a conaminant, and change its charge state. The
positive plate is still strong enough to attract this ion, and thus
the contaminant also. The end result is the positive plates get
covered with gunk from the air.

Let us know how it turns out.
 
Mark, thank you. I really appreciate your help. I went to home depot
today and got the metal wires and sheets, but now I realize I have no
idea which lead is positive and which is negative. I took the housing
apart, and the transformer has no markings indicating anything, and
both output leads are red. Is there any way I can test it to determine
which lead is which?

Thanks again,
Adam
 
Adam wrote:
Mark, thank you. I really appreciate your help. I went to home depot
today and got the metal wires and sheets, but now I realize I have no
idea which lead is positive and which is negative. I took the housing
apart, and the transformer has no markings indicating anything, and
both output leads are red. Is there any way I can test it to determine
which lead is which?

Thanks again,
Adam
Click to expand...
Like the man said, it is AC.
Gots to git some HV diodes...and maybe a HV cap for filtering..
 
Don Taylor wrote:
Mark Jones <abuse@127.0.0.1> writes:
Robert Baer wrote:
Adam wrote:
Mark, thank you. I really appreciate your help. I went to home depot
today and got the metal wires and sheets, but now I realize I have no
idea which lead is positive and which is negative. I took the housing
apart, and the transformer has no markings indicating anything, and
both output leads are red. Is there any way I can test it to determine
which lead is which?

Like the man said, it is AC.
Gots to git some HV diodes...and maybe a HV cap for filtering..

You could try two of these:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?&item=R6000

To learn how diodes work, check this out:
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/Semi/SEMI_3.html

I had an odd thought. Any ideas about building an electrostatic
precipitator that would fit somewhere between the manifold and
the exhaust pipe of an automobile? I've seen some cars burning
enough oil to be visible and I was wondering if there might be a
way to cut that down substantially, and at a fraction of the cost
of tearing the engine down and replacing all the rings, turning
large volumes of air pollution into smaller volumes of solid waste
pollution.

Even a demonstration of feasibility would be interesting to try.
But building something that can stand up to the abusive environment
of the underside of a car seems like a daunting challenge.

thanks

For those in the U.S. who might recognize it, maybe the...
Ronco muffler cleaner :) For those of you who do not recognize
this, Ronco is a company in the U.S. that sells some of the more
questionable inventions to consumers.
Click to expand...
If the rings or pistons are so bad that lotza oil gets but=rned, then
*hiding* the result is really not the way to "solve" a problem.
One should fix the (literally) stinking engine!
 
Mark Jones <abuse@127.0.0.1> writes:
Robert Baer wrote:
Don Taylor wrote:
I had an odd thought. Any ideas about building an electrostatic
precipitator that would fit somewhere between the manifold and
the exhaust pipe of an automobile? I've seen some cars burning
enough oil to be visible and I was wondering if there might be a
way to cut that down substantially, and at a fraction of the cost
of tearing the engine down and replacing all the rings, turning
large volumes of air pollution into smaller volumes of solid waste
pollution.

Even a demonstration of feasibility would be interesting to try.
But building something that can stand up to the abusive environment
of the underside of a car seems like a daunting challenge.

If the rings or pistons are so bad that lotza oil gets but=rned, then
*hiding* the result is really not the way to "solve" a problem.
One should fix the (literally) stinking engine!
Click to expand...
Well, to take one position, all the current emission control hardware
and computer controlled compensation built into the recent cars seems
like it isn't all that wildly different from what I'm suggesting here.
I'm told an engine can be pretty far down the hill before the software
just can't compensate for it anymore and you discover the problem.

On the other hand, the adjacent state has high license fees, based on
the value of the car. I think I see a larger number of old beaters
over the border.

It is easy to say what somebody else should do. But how many of those
folks are going to pay a price equal to the majority of the current
value of a car to get someone to tear an engine down to the ground
and rebuild it? I question how much of car repair is cost justified.

I know someone who sank $1200 into getting her transmission worked
on, when to be really brutally honest, the car probably wouldn't sell
for that, either before the problem was discovered or after the work
was done. It was her decision but I suspect that after it was over
she probably regretted it just about as much as buying something else.

I suppose we could tell them that they really should do is go buy
themselves new $48,000 car to fix the problem. This wouldn't be a
problem when we all thought we were going to make more money every
year off to infinity and we believed there would be no end to new cars.
But as more and more sail off towards being part-time minimum wage,
no-benefit employees I wonder where this is going to go. I fully admit
that more and more are giving up maintenance to cover other bills.

True. A mesh filter the diameter of a tailpipe would clog very
quickly... how do you clean oil from a wire mesh filter? Hmmm.
Click to expand...
I've been thinking about how this could be built to make operation
dependable and maintenance feasible.
 
Robert Baer wrote:
Adam wrote:

Mark, thank you. I really appreciate your help. I went to home depot
today and got the metal wires and sheets, but now I realize I have no
idea which lead is positive and which is negative. I took the housing
apart, and the transformer has no markings indicating anything, and
both output leads are red. Is there any way I can test it to determine
which lead is which?

Thanks again,
Adam


Like the man said, it is AC.
Gots to git some HV diodes...and maybe a HV cap for filtering..
Click to expand...

You could try two of these:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?&item=R6000

To learn how diodes work, check this out:
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/Semi/SEMI_3.html



-- "Perseverance, and perseverance alone, is omnipotent." MCJ 1998
 
Robert Baer wrote:
Don Taylor wrote:

Mark Jones <abuse@127.0.0.1> writes:

Robert Baer wrote:

Adam wrote:

Mark, thank you. I really appreciate your help. I went to home depot
today and got the metal wires and sheets, but now I realize I have no
idea which lead is positive and which is negative. I took the housing
apart, and the transformer has no markings indicating anything, and
both output leads are red. Is there any way I can test it to determine
which lead is which?

Like the man said, it is AC.
Gots to git some HV diodes...and maybe a HV cap for filtering..

You could try two of these:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?&item=R6000

To learn how diodes work, check this out:
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/Semi/SEMI_3.html

I had an odd thought. Any ideas about building an electrostatic
precipitator that would fit somewhere between the manifold and
the exhaust pipe of an automobile? I've seen some cars burning
enough oil to be visible and I was wondering if there might be a
way to cut that down substantially, and at a fraction of the cost
of tearing the engine down and replacing all the rings, turning
large volumes of air pollution into smaller volumes of solid waste
pollution.

Even a demonstration of feasibility would be interesting to try.
But building something that can stand up to the abusive environment
of the underside of a car seems like a daunting challenge.

thanks

For those in the U.S. who might recognize it, maybe the...
Ronco muffler cleaner :) For those of you who do not recognize
this, Ronco is a company in the U.S. that sells some of the more
questionable inventions to consumers.


If the rings or pistons are so bad that lotza oil gets but=rned, then
*hiding* the result is really not the way to "solve" a problem.
One should fix the (literally) stinking engine!
Click to expand...

True. A mesh filter the diameter of a tailpipe would clog very
quickly... how do you clean oil from a wire mesh filter? Hmmm.

-- "Over-unity, UFO's, Zero-Point Energy... there's a reason
scientists go 'mad.'" MCJ 200305
 
Don Taylor wrote:
Mark Jones <abuse@127.0.0.1> writes:

Robert Baer wrote:

Don Taylor wrote:

I had an odd thought. Any ideas about building an electrostatic
precipitator that would fit somewhere between the manifold and
the exhaust pipe of an automobile? I've seen some cars burning
enough oil to be visible and I was wondering if there might be a
way to cut that down substantially, and at a fraction of the cost
of tearing the engine down and replacing all the rings, turning
large volumes of air pollution into smaller volumes of solid waste
pollution.

Even a demonstration of feasibility would be interesting to try.
But building something that can stand up to the abusive environment
of the underside of a car seems like a daunting challenge.

If the rings or pistons are so bad that lotza oil gets but=rned, then
*hiding* the result is really not the way to "solve" a problem.
One should fix the (literally) stinking engine!


Well, to take one position, all the current emission control hardware
and computer controlled compensation built into the recent cars seems
like it isn't all that wildly different from what I'm suggesting here.
I'm told an engine can be pretty far down the hill before the software
just can't compensate for it anymore and you discover the problem.

On the other hand, the adjacent state has high license fees, based on
the value of the car. I think I see a larger number of old beaters
over the border.

It is easy to say what somebody else should do. But how many of those
folks are going to pay a price equal to the majority of the current
value of a car to get someone to tear an engine down to the ground
and rebuild it? I question how much of car repair is cost justified.

I know someone who sank $1200 into getting her transmission worked
on, when to be really brutally honest, the car probably wouldn't sell
for that, either before the problem was discovered or after the work
was done. It was her decision but I suspect that after it was over
she probably regretted it just about as much as buying something else.

I suppose we could tell them that they really should do is go buy
themselves new $48,000 car to fix the problem. This wouldn't be a
problem when we all thought we were going to make more money every
year off to infinity and we believed there would be no end to new cars.
But as more and more sail off towards being part-time minimum wage,
no-benefit employees I wonder where this is going to go. I fully admit
that more and more are giving up maintenance to cover other bills.


True. A mesh filter the diameter of a tailpipe would clog very
quickly... how do you clean oil from a wire mesh filter? Hmmm.


I've been thinking about how this could be built to make operation
dependable and maintenance feasible.
Click to expand...

Another consideration is the major pollutants emitted by the engine.
CO2 is probably the single largest emission (aside from heat) and
electrostatics aren't going to touch it. If the exhaust gasses could
be cooled to -98°F then the CO2 would precipitate out as "snow" - but
even then, there is no place cold enough to store it for any period of
time. The best solution might be to reformulate it into something else.

I'm not sure if simple hydrocarbons and nitrous oxides are heavy
enough to be precipitated electrostatically. If this were the case,
wouldn't electrostatic emissions controls already be in place?


-- "I can conceptualize what infinity is, but I cannot imagine it."
MCJ 200406
 
I know commercial precipitators use DC, I was just wondering if it
would work with AC current. According to the ionic breeze patent, it
uses pulsed DC in order to move the air without a fan. I'm using a
fan, so I was wondering if I could just run AC current between the
screens, and if that would be able to create a strong enough field to
charge the dust particles flying between them.

Thanks,
Adam
 
On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 23:09:54 -0800, Adam wrote:

OOpps!

Just saw that I flamed a post that's three weeks old.

Sorry.

Shamefacedly,
Rich
 
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 06:46:57 +0000, Rich Grise wrote:
.....
YES! YOU TEST IT BY ENERGIZING IT AND BLOWING AIR ACROSS IT! IF DIRT
ACCUMULATES, IT'S WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How many times do you have to
be told this?
Click to expand...
WHEN AM I GOING TO LEARN TO LOOK AT THE DATE ON A POST I'M FLAMING WHEN
I'VE FIRED UP A NEW NEWSREADER??????????????????????????

Sorry,
Rich
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Welcome to EDABoard.com

Sponsor

Back
Top