Creating High-Powered Batteries for Car Audio Experiments | Tips & Ideas

[SPL Tech]

I am a car audio installer. So everything I work with runs off of 12VDC. I wanted to make some fun audio related experiments and film them. One experiment I was thinking of doing was making a bunch of lemon batteries and running a car audio CD player off of them. But I recently learned that apparently lemon batteries can not provide much current or voltage. So does anyone have an idea of how I can make some batteries that will be able to provide about 6 amps and 14 volts? I have some battery acid lying around in my house that I can use. I know I can fill up a large cup with the acid and find a big chunk of copper and place it on the acid and get a large chunk of zinc and place it in the acid and I will have a battery. But the question is will it be able to provide enough current and voltage? And if not how many would I have to make?

Anyone have some ideas on making a battery for my application? Also does anyone know of any other electricity related experiments that I could do? It does not have to involve audio. Just anything that would be interesting to film.

 

[NoTime]

Cut the case off the battery, put the bits in 6 different jars.

 

[SPL Tech]

No, I am talking about building my own natural battery from scratch. Not taking the cells out of an automotive battery and placing them in a jar and filling the jar with acid. Doing that is pretty much the same thing as just leaving an automotive battery like it is and using that. I want to so something a bit more creative.

 

[dlgoff]

Do you have a multimeter to measure voltage? Maybe you could do the lemon battery thing. Measure the voltage of one lemon cell then series up a bunch to get the right voltage (there's one battery). For more current make severel of these batteries and parallel them up.

For 6 amps you'll need a lot of lemons.

Regards

 

[SPL Tech]

Yes I have like 6 DMM's. I do not think the lemons will work. I got one and I could only get about 3 volts and 100 mA out of it. Any other ideas?

 

[berkeman]

How about building a fuel cell? I don't know much about them, but building one from scratch sounds challenging and fun. You can even make your own electrolysis apparatus to generate the hydrogen and oxygen fuel components.

 

[Averagesupernova]

Build a thermocouple battery. Obviously you need quite a few of them in parallel and series also, but at least it won't rot away when you aren't using it. Use a large torch of some sort to heat it. Horribly inefficient, but fun.

 

[construction_guy]

request for elaboration

I am also interested in setting up a method of producing electricity at home. I wam interested in thermocouple batteries. I wonder if supercooling one of the thermocouple junction would increase the rendering. I have been having difficulties finding information on the net. I found this thread during a search and, although this is off-topic, I thought someone here might be able to help with advice, help finding info, etc.

Thanks,

Louis

 

[Averagesupernova]

Construction guy, it really depends on how much electricity you want. Thermocouples are fun because they can produce without any moving parts from a candle or something. However, large scale production I would think would be out of the question. There are better alternatives to doing something in a practical manner other than thermocouples for generating electricity at home. For instance the wind-up radios are far more practical than a thermocouple. I suggested it to the OP because it is unconventional and would be taken to the extreme to run a headunit in a car stereo installation.