We are now routinely running SunCells at four test stations with the goal of an hour continuous run time. These are some of the failure modes that we encountered and fixed with the corresponding forced downtime:
- vendor bellows weld failure (3 weeks),
- water pump cooling system of induction heaters (1 month),
- heat tape short (2 weeks),
- breakdown of induction heater (4 weeks),
- failure of new Chinese induction heater to work (1 week),
- power supplies falling off the truck (3 weeks),
- air cooling line short (1 week),
- injector line freezing (4 weeks),
- laser welding oxidized critical part due to vendor error (3 weeks),
- laser weld failure (1 week),
- bus bar contact failure (1 week),
- EM bus bars overheating (1 week),
- EM pump magnets overheating (2 weeks),
- excessive oxide in cell before H2 reduction occurs (1 week),
- antenna impedance matching for desired power distribution to SunCell zones (4 weeks),
- antenna breaking from alignment (1 week),
- antenna build error that required redesign and rebuild (2 weeks, but improved design),
- antenna design for alignment failure (1 week),
- antenna shorting EM pumps (1 week),
- vendor alloy prevention coating failure (1 week),
- reservoir failure on long term run cells lacking protective coating due to alloy formation (2 weeks),
- magnet cooling blocks reassembled incorrectly causing a cooing failure (1.5 weeks),
- supply chain disruption due to tariffs (4 weeks),
- silicon dioxide of a quartz liner vaporizing and causing reaction of the oxygen with tin to form tin oxide that opacified the dome (3 days),
- plasma localizing too low in the stainless steel dome causing it to overheat and melt, and nozzles over heating (3 weeks).
So, far it appears that we are very close to finalizing the design with the SunCell operating very powerfully even at low input powers as shown in the attached photo.
