I raced over to the shop, and Fred showed me around. He was in the process of modifying two pieces of stainless steel tube (which were originally the same size). The outside of one tube was on the lathe being shaved down, and he'd already done similar work to the inside of the other. This was so one tube could be placed inside the other.
The tubes were placed in a container, which is filled with tap water. An alternating current at just the right frequency is applied to the tubes, and jiggles the water molecules into a gas. This form of water (HHO) is known as brown's gas.
I tried to stop in once-a-month, just to keep track of the progress. At one point his business partner's truck was running on a different prototype version - the one that had smaller pairs of tubes.
He was going to hold a demonstration in August, but then his business partner ran the prototype wrong, and it busted a crack in the plastic container. When I showed up at the shop that morning, they'd already pulled the cell from the truck. In that photo you can see the water tank, some of the electronics, and where the cell was formerly mounted.
More pictures from the disassembled Prototype #6 (?) are also available.
One of the most important parts of building a brown's gas generator is getting the electronics right. The first couple prototypes used a generic pulse width modulator from eBay, but they are now using more specialized & robust electronics. I can't find the announcement right now - perhaps when I get home I'll find the link again.
http://pesn.com/2011/01/29/9501754_Water_as_Fuel--Thoughts_on_Improving_Freddys_
Cell/
'Mom' says her son moved to Kentucky in November, is quite busy, and that they're working on putting the first 100 units together. All the latest updates are supposedly on the YouTube Channel, but I haven't watched those yet.
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There have been lots of other exciting energy developments in the past few months. I hope you all heard about the Italians' cold fusion system. A 1MW generator is supposedly under construction.