Thursday, November 12, 2009

Make a Simple, but, Powerful Air Ionizer!!

Several years ago, I've been playing with some simple "negative ion generator" circuits...
You can easily get the circuit on the internet of course... Such as this...

It uses voltage multiplier a.k.a.  "Cockcroft-Walton Generator" to multiply the voltage to several kilovolts...
I tried that before, and, surprisingly, it does work!! It makes me sleep easier, relaxed, so on and so forth...

But, it's not powerful enough to meet my requirement... I want to ionize the whole air in my entire house!!
Bwahahaha!!

So, I come out with more powerful design...
Very little parts are needed...

In this project, I use:

555-astable circuit



The circuit is pretty simple, but, very effective... All you have to do is tune it to your flyback transformer resonant frequency... To indicate that you achieved resonance, the transistor is cold to touch and it does not draw high current but yet, it produce high output...


The Flyback Transformer



As you may noticed, I also wind a new primary on the ferrite-core... Mine is about 8 turns...
I get this for free from my friend's old monitor... (Thanks Salahudeen!!)
In this case, the transformer produce DC HV output...
The positive is the one which have the rubber cap, while the negative, you have the find it on your own which pin is the correct one...

The NPN Transistor...



It may looks funny, I submerged the transistor in ATF-oil... Although the transistor is cold to touch, I believe it's safer to do it this way... It really saved my transistors from frequent death... Lol!!

The Negative Ion Emmiter Design



This is the simplest design that I can think of... I use a small hex driver as the negative pole, and I use an old hard disk platter as the positive pole...
The hex driver is been positioned at the center of the platter's hole...
Small purple arc also can being seen...

The PSU



I use 3 batteries as the PSU... First battery is used to drive the 555-timer circuit, while other two batteries is been configured in 24V to run the flyback windings...

The RESULTS!!

The result are quite impressive... It worked better than I thought... Here's several pictures of it:




3 amps at 24V max...




Corona discharge at the center emmiter...



Another corona stream shot...




Old tissue proving the strong air flow... It's propellerless!!
Ha!! Better than Dyson's design...




The breeze can be feel at over 12 inches!! It smell fresh too...




In future, I would like to make it in a bigger scale... Hopefully, I can get a strong wind as normal table fan does... Its very quite too... And, cheaper than Dyson's fan... Hahaha!!