funny phonmenon

[Illum]

I salvaged a couple 10 ohm high power hollow wirewounds and was thinking of using them as steam generating elements vertically submerged halfway in water [don't ask] and two 30W solar panels

I figured I start out small so I used a 10ohm ceramic 1/4W resistor hooked up to a 9V 1A supply, calculations suggest it'll be sinking close to an amp of current and yielding 8W of heat:candle:
Set the wires up, used a glass container, fill it up with tap, tossed an ice cube in for good measure, then turned the PSU on. Everything was quiet when the PSU was off, then when it was turned on the resistor started screaming in the water, I dunno whether its like an damaged inductor or a velvet ant, but it will continually emit this high pitched oscillation even though the thermomether still showed the water being at room temperature. The ice cube was long gone at this point and both wires holding the resistor was resting on the glass but the resistor is floating in water. Immediately shutting down the PSU everything was quiet, turned it back on and its eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee all over again, at this point since I have no thermocouple on the resistor I don't know if its on fire or freezing to death.
But either way, its not happy...as soon as I removed the water using a syringe my test sample burst into flames, clouded the wires, container, and filled the air with a very pungent burnt plastic smell:shakehead

Can anyone explain this phenmenon? was it rapid expansion and contraction of the carbon film?

 

[LukeA]

I can't explain the whine, but I think you'll need a lot more power to make a decent amount of steam.

I remember a project from a while ago where our goal was to condense methanol vapor at 0.00166kg/s. That's 2gph, and methanol boils at a lower temperature than water and has a lower heat of vaporization, and the dq/dt out was still 1.83kW. So, if you want to boil 2gph of water you need more than ~2kW of heat entering that water.

I don't know what your desired mass flow rate is, but I think you probably need some more Dilithium crystals.