Thick plates and heat

[midnight1957]

I am building a hydrogen generator that will have 4 cells with each cell having 7 plates +NN-NN+ wired in series. The plates that I am using are almost 1/8 inches thick and are 316 SS. I have heard that thick plates will cause heat, is this correct and are my plates too thick?

Thanks and have a Blessed day,
Wade

[donnylynn]

plate thickness wont affect heat. Heat is caused by current flow and voltage in excess of what is needed per cell increases current flow.

[justaguy]

My opinion is the thicker plates will pull a lot more amps. Actually, they will probably retain the heat too. If you think about it, the surface is what you want anyway. Thin plates have the same surface. But if thats what you have, go for it. Let us know your results.

[Roland Jacques]

The thicker electrodes should pull LESS amps & less heat.
The nuetral plates thickness should not make much differance as far as heat goes but IMO they should be thin.

[Haywire Haywood]

Depends on the amps you're pulling. Think of them like wires as all they are doing is conducting electricity. The thicker the wire, the more current it will handle without getting hot. I expect plates would be the same. You could go to extremes and make your plates from SS tin foil if you could keep them stiff enough but run 30 amps through them and I expect they would burn up. That said, 1/8" plate would be good for a lot of amps. 16ga plates (~1/16") I would expect are more than sufficient for most cells. I ended up with 16 ga because that is what the shop had on hand. I think I would have preferred 18 or 20 just for ease of bending and such.

Ian

Edit... here's a sheet metal gauge chart. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheet_metal_gauge

[justaguy]

I see your point but what i,m saying is you could run lower amps with thinner plates. I think it would take more amps for the thicker plates to put out.
The thicker plates would handle the amps better if you were pushing x amount of amps through it but the surface is what produces hho anyway.

This has been brought up and tested on either this forum or the other forum one and they said thinner was better. Heck, I don,t know.