"Captret" Demystified

[ion]

If you are not already familiar with the "captret" claims just google it for the claims or go here:

http://www.overunity.com/9878/captret-capacitor-and-electret/

The operation of the so misnamed "*captret" is easily explained if folks would just use a milliamp meter to measure the current drain of the battery. The battery is not being charged, rather the load on the battery is progressively decreased so the voltage rises.

If the battery were being charged, the milliampmeter would reverse sign. This is not the case.

What happens is this:

The "captret" configuration of using the outer case and the negative electrode presents initially a very leaky capacitor to the series circuit, more like a capacitor with a variable resistor. This initially creates a lot of current flow and slightly warms the battery activating the electrochemical output.

As the oxide layer is formed between the case and the negative electrode, the leakage decreases from initially about 300mA to the range of 1 to 5 mA. Even less leakage can be had if left on for a very long time, so an LED can be lit on less than 1 mA for a very long time.

Because of the reduced load on the battery, the battery voltage is seen to rise. This is a simple load line as the battery is not a perfect voltage source, and much less so when the battery is near the end of it's life.

There is no mystery here, just poor measurement technique and mis-observations of what is occurring.

You could  get the same "effect" with a variable resistor instead of the "captret" Use two nearly dead 9 volt batteries with about 7.5 volts each in series.

Adjust the potentiometer of the simple series circuit to simulate an initial 300mA current drain then over a few minutes reduce it to 1 mA current drain. Do this while observing battery voltage.

You will also see the battery voltage appear to rise due to reduced loading. This also is not recharging as the current meter never changes sign.

* This is a misnomer as the so called "captret" is actually a very poor electret in that it has way too much leakage to be any good, orders of magnitude more leakage than a good electrolytic or film capacitor. It's recovery is limited by this.
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Part 2
Did a test on another capacitor in "captret" configuration monitoring current vs time from a 10 volt source.

Initial current:        equivalent leakage resistance:

100mA                     100 ohms

One minute later:

10mA                       1000 ohms

Two Minutes

1 mA                        10,000 ohms

Three minutes

0.1 mA                     100,000 ohms

As the oxide layer forms the leakage resistance progressively goes up as current goes down.

At no time did the current ever reverse, even after one hour when the leakage was less than 0.1 mA. So there is no battery charging effect.

As I said in the previous post the "captret " acts like a variable resistor changing resistance upward over time hence presenting a much lower load on the battery from the initial connection.

The reduced current over time causes the battery voltage to increase giving the illusion that the battery is being charged....it is not.

A high brightness led fed from a 9 volt battery will be lit for a very long time  when operated at less than 0.1 mA.

[TinMan]

Not long after opening the forum IAEC,i set about thinking of a fool proof way of telling if a battery was being charged or discharged by a device of any kind-the answer was quite simple, As the forum was designed for beginners and medioka people,just starting out in the world of free energy devices,it needed to exclude equipment like scope's etc.All that is needed is a DMM set on volt's dc-thats all thats required to see if your battery is being charged or discharged.

1-Conect the DMM to the battery.
2-Record battery voltage.
3-Conect the device to the battery.
4-Run device for 1 hour-this depends on battery size and device.
5-Disconect device from battery,but leave DMM conected to battery..
Now,if battery voltage starts to rise-power was being drawn from battery.
If battery voltage drop's,then power was being delivered to battery-it's that simple.

When ever you charge a battery,it will drop to a resting voltage when the charger is disconected.
When ever you are drawing power from a battery,the battery voltage will rise to a resting voltage when the load is disconected.

[ion]

Tinman, thanks for your input, I will test your method at some point.

Back in the day, automobiles would have a deviation type amp meter that read -/+

If current was flowing out of the battery, the meter read minus.

If current was flowing into the battery, the meter read plus.

The same thing can be done with your DMM set to amps or milli-amps scale.

Just put the negative lead of the DMM on the plus of the battery, the positive lead of the DMM is now the new battery plus terminal.

If current is flowing out of the battery, the meter reads minus (value).

If current is flowing into the battery, the meter read plus (value).

The meter can be buffered with a large capacitor if pulses are present, but it will still show the average and the direction of flow.

Another method is the use of a current shunt resistor with the meter set to volts or millivolts, depending on the value of of the resistor. Then current flow and amount out of or into the battery can be easily seen.

These are real time measurements that do not rely on battery electro chemistry quirks.

Why no one initially did this with the "captret" is beyond me, as it is the first measurement that any serious researcher would make, and would instantly put to rest any claims of the "captret" charging the battery.

[TinMan]

Yes-i have one of those amp meters with plus and minus scales.
I use to use the other method you speak off,until i was caught out one day-and to this day,i cannot figure out why the meter read a negative value?. I was testing a solid state device that was using a large ring magnet as the core-(i think i mentioned this to poynt99).I had a large 12 volt battery,then the Dmm(set to amps),then to a large 10000uf cap. The power for the device was being drawn from the cap.At a certain frequency,the amp meter would go negative to about -240mA . Thinking the meter was playing up,i swaped it out for another-the same thing happened. I then place a 1ohm 5 watt resistor between the battery negative,and cap negative. I placed my scope across this resistor,and had a forward current flow all the time-reguardless of frequency,even when the amp meter read a negative current flow.The current flow was very smooth across the resistor,so the meters couldnt have been trying to read a pulsed current.I have never had this happen befor that day,or any day after on any other device.So in this one case,my DMM said the battery was being charged at a certain frequency,but my scope showed a continual current draw from the battery

[ion]

Tinman, I believe you, some DMM's can be quirky and unreliable at certain frequencies / pulses etc.

Sometimes I just use a plain old D'Arsonval deviation meter movement. Other times I use a small R-C filter with the DMM.