VIC design session v96: reasoning

This sweep confirms something I've been circling: at the 3.7mH/12.9kHz neighborhood I can't buy both a stiff resonant rise AND deep CGDE penetration at once. The tank Q is only 1.2 — the 457Ω cell series R from the Randles branch (bulk water plus the two double-layers) is swamping the 588Ω reactances, so my voltage magnification is a feeble ×1.2. That's the honest limitation: the ionic branch is loading the tank, and no amount of coil Q (34.5, respectable) rescues a tank Q that low. What actually moves the needle here is raw drive, not resonant gain.

The trade-off is clean. Pushing drive 250V→300V lifts V_cell 310V→372V and walks the vapor-film from 124 Td to 148 Td — deeper into the 80-250 Td cold-chemistry window — but costs me breakdown margin (×96→×80) and more circulating current (0.53A→0.63A). All five candidates tie at 0.312 because the scorer is rewarding that Td window and penalizing average draw, which duty cleanly decouples.

I'm adopting #4: 300V drive, 148 Td, 2% duty, 13mA average. It sits deepest in the window while margin ×80 is still comfortable, and 2% duty keeps average input honest. Circulating 0.63A means I rate the choke wire and switch for ≥1A CW — don't trust the average.

Next session: I want tank Q up, so I attack cell series R directly — bump water to 5-8ppm and warm to 40°C to drop bulk R, and re-check whether the double-layer still sizes the same. Then re-sweep drive 300-350V against the new breakdown ceiling.

GENERATE:{"tool":"generate_circuit","parameters":{"template":"resonant-lc","values":{"title":"VIC CGDE sweep — 300V drive, 14.18kHz","chokeUH":3300,"chokeTurns":1350,"chokeAWG":22,"cellNF":19.1,"fResKHz":14.18,"qFactor":1.2,"kV":0.372}}}