DIY Hydrogen/Oxygen Generators From Grocery Store Items (HHO Fuel Cells & Split Cell Electrolysis)

hi everyone in this video you can see in front of me i have several devices which are the result of this last week's worth of experimentation these devices are meant for electrolysis which is the electrochemical process of splitting water into its component atomic parts hydrogen and oxygen now there are several different ways that you can do this and i have attempted to develop these models for electrolysis independently of other designs because i wanted to be original in my thinking and hopefully have something new to contribute now the two primary ways that electrolysis is done is having a split output design or a singular output design meaning when you split water and you get hydrogen and oxygen at the output you can either have that hydrogen and oxygen combined as it comes out of the device meaning there's only one outlet tube or you can have separate outlets now when you have a combined outlet where the hydrogen and oxygen is pre-mixed as it exits the device i don't find that especially useful because the gas that comes out is called hho or bronze gas it is a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen and oxygen which is just waiting for a spark to rapidly explode and turn back into water it is extremely dangerous to store in any quantity and so you cannot produce it in advance of whatever you're using it for the more useful method for electrolysis that i have found is to have a split output device meaning that hydrogen comes out of one outlet and oxygen comes out of another it's much safer to store the gases you produce because they are not immediately explosive in this video we probably won't get too deep into the applications for pure hydrogen and oxygen gas but for someone like myself who does a lot of home chemistry and physics experiments the most practical purposes for these gases are going to be of that nature doing home experiments and especially if you keep following my channel you may see me make an oxyhydrogen torch and you also may see pure hydrogen used in my thermoacoustic experiments this is the first electrolysis design i came up with for this video and right off the bat there are a few fatal flaws in this setup but there are a few features that i really like that i continue to use in my following designs so we'll go over those first first of all what i really like about this is the electrodes for my electrodes i am using a stainless steel whisk like this one these are less than a dollar i think i got this particular whisk at walmart and there are some features of this that are very good for electrolysis first of all they are made of stainless steel and in order to generate hydrogen and oxygen gas through electrolysis you need a metal that will not easily corrode when you pass electricity through it stainless steel is a great option it is probably the best option that is commonly available without special ordering something like graphite foil online these are available at any supermarket these in particular are also great because they are adjustable simply by sliding the spacer down over the wires you get a much smaller electrode and you can slide this metal sleeve down to hold it in place now this will fit in a much smaller container or a large one if you slide it back up what's also interesting about using these as an electrode is that this metal tube is not completely filled by the volume of the wires that pass through it leaving enough room for gas to flow through this tube which means when used as the electrode in an electrolysis setup this can double both as the electrode and the gas outlet in this design if i simply attach a tube over the end of the whisk and down over the metal sleeve now i have a tube which can act as my gas outlet and i only had to drill one hole through the lid in order to accomplish this both the electrode and the gas output are one and the same these whisks also work really well as electrodes because it's really easy to increase their surface area to increase the efficiency of the electrolysis process and the best way to do this is with a stainless steel scouring pad these are made of very fine stainless steel turnings and these pads can easily be inserted into the wires of the whisk greatly increasing the surface area where the water will be able to react with the electricity that we pass through these electrodes separating them more efficiently into oxygen and hydrogen this has an additional benefit of acting in a sort of sacrificial way where as the electricity passes through these electrodes and does eventually erode them away the stainless steel scouring pad will erode much quicker than the thick steel wires that the whisk is made of so when we eventually do see some erosion we can just pull out the whole electrode replace the stainless steel scouring pad and greatly increase the life of the electrode as a whole it's a really nice little design now in this particular setup i have one whisk inserted into each bottle so we have two separate electrodes in two separate containers which allows us to produce oxygen and hydrogen gas in a separate outlet so in order to start generating these gases what i do is i will connect up the wires from my power supply onto each of my electrodes and turn on the power now right now this power supply is at maximum capacity at 31 volts and this system at that voltage is only drawing about .12 amps which is very bad we should see a much higher current draw at that voltage and well that's due to some flaws in this system first of all these bottles are electrically connected to one another through this tube right here this is a siphon bridge where i have the end of this tube submerged in the liquid in each of these bottles and then filled with the liquid itself so electricity can pass from one bottle to the other through this liquid now these bottles are filled with plain ordinary water and to increase the electrical conductivity you need to add an electrolyte in this case i have used potassium hydroxide which is one of the best electrolytes for electrolysis it greatly increases the electrical conductivity of water and also aids in the generation of particularly hydrogen gas however since this electrical connection is so greatly divided we barely see any bubbles forming on our electrodes in an ideal setup the electrodes should be as close together as possible so electricity can easily pass between them in this case electricity has to go all the way up through this siphon bridge and down to reach the other container this is my version 2 electrolysis setup this is very similar to the first one we looked at we still have two separate bottles but in this case they are both contained inside a larger bottle which will hold a reservoir of fluid there's no siphon bridge between the two and so the electricity can flow between these bottles much more easily because the bottom is cut off which allows electricity to pass only a very short distance between the bottom of each bottle instead of traveling all the way up and around almost 12 inches to make electrical contact in my first design because of that this version works significantly better at producing gas the only problem is that this setup has an open top which means it's very easy to tip over and spill if i were to fill this setup with water and then a solution of lye or potassium hydroxide we would have a very dangerous situation on our hands where this container could easily tip over and spill a hot caustic solution all over me that might have happened during the process of creating these designs i'm forced to use an inferior electrolyte in this case baking soda now potassium hydroxide is approximately three times more efficient at producing hydrogen and oxygen gas through electrolysis but still we'll see what we can do when i add this electrolyte to the system we should see the amperage rise rapidly and hopefully we will be able to start some gas production let's give it a shot now i am starting to see some significant gas production in this setup and we are pulling almost 1.7 amps at 31 volts which is more than 10 times more effective than our first setup now because we used the baking soda as the electrolyte this result could be more than three times better if we were using potassium hydroxide but unfortunately because of the open top to this design it's just too dangerous to use that corrosive of a solution so the baking soda is the limiting factor if we close this system so that we can use the better electrolyte of potassium hydroxide we should see an even better result before we continue we'll take one minute to look at this video's sponsor mel physics now we've looked at mel chemistry in earlier videos and i demonstrated a few of their chemical experiments with male physics we get something a little bit different the project boxes contain two or three different experiments to help you or young members of your family understand a physical principle like light polarization or the generation of electricity these are great hands-on projects they really show you practical examples not only of how a property of physics works but how it can be put to use experimentation is one of the most effective and long lasting ways to absorb and comprehend new information check this out we can use light polarization to actually see these stress patterns in a piece of plastic this shows us exactly where there are weak spots in the material and how it might be likely to break likewise with the renewable energy kit you learn the core principles of real world electrical generators if you're interested to try mel physics they'll provide you with a new kit every month free online classes via zoom and you can get 50 off your first set of experiments by using my link in the video description below and here it is the final version of my split output electrolysis device using the stainless steel whisk electrodes and in this case it is packed into a single watertight container so i can feel safe using potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte now in order to construct this it was a simple process of drilling two holes straight through the lid of this container so that the stainless steel tube that surrounds the handle of the whisk could pass through the lid and then through the cap of several bottle caps on the underside now the reason for these bottles as with the previous version is to direct the gas bubbles upwards that are formed around each electrode so hydrogen only flows upward and out of this tube and oxygen out of this one if i have it connected in that configuration so let me put on my safety glasses we'll take this lid back off and load this container up with electrolyte and then connect the power supply and see what happens now in this case i am so confident that this is going to work extremely well that before i turn on this power supply i'm going to turn the voltage way down because we're not going to need nearly as many volts to reach a high current using potassium hydroxide so i've got this connected up so that we're producing hydrogen out of this side oxygen out of this side let me turn on the power supply and then we will slowly turn up the voltage alright we can see already how quickly the amperage is rising we are already at 4 amps at almost 7 volts so this is much more effective than the previous models as i get up to about 12 volts which would be what you could generate if you were running this thing on something like a battery charger for a car this is the current you could expect to draw more than nine amps we can see already how much gas is being generated some of the dangerous things we need to look out for in a device like this is if there is a lot of air above the surface of the electrolyte in this container that is a potential volume of gas that could fill with hydrogen and oxygen and become explosive so if you see bubbles escaping out from underneath the containers in this setup you want to be careful and maybe readjust the containers so fewer bubbles escape maybe raise up the electrodes so they are higher above that lower rim of the containers you also should open this container up after you're done running it let it air out so that any buildup of residual gas is gone by the next time you use it one final thing you should be aware of when using an electrolysis device such as this is just pay attention to the temperature after about a half hour of passing nearly 10 amps through a small volume of fluid like this it's going to get quite warm warm enough perhaps to damage the plastic container or the bottles inside in a previous run of this particular model i was using different bottles on the inside of the container and this is one of them you can see that it is severely deformed from the perfect circle it was originally and at the top it's actually cracked all the way through the bottle there must have been some pre-existing stress in the plastic of this bottle which the hot potassium hydroxide solution was able to release forming these cracks so if this seems like it's getting too warm just ease off on the voltage on the power supply or if you're using a battery charger disconnect it for a while let it rest cool off before you continue well as i mentioned this is the last variation of a split output electrolysis device that i have to show you in this video but i do still have two more models to demonstrate that have a combined output now you might ask why i would bother combining the outputs since at the start of the video i mentioned that having a split output gives you a much more practical product well there are some advantages that being that you don't have to worry about shrouding the electrodes underneath the water so that the gases stay separate if you don't have to worry about all this extra material separating the electrodes you can bring them much closer together and get even higher efficiencies so let me bring in the new devices and i think you'll see what i mean now this is version one of my single output electrolysis attempt and i think this is an awesome design so this is a stainless steel food container and the lid of this container by the nature of the design of the container itself is already electrically isolated from the lower portion that can hold a volume of liquid this lid is lined with a piece of plastic which if you look closely you can actually see is preventing the two sides from coming into contact what that means is that i can connect one electrode to the lid of this container have it dipping into the volume of liquid inside and then use the main body of the container itself as my second electrode now this is how that works out in practice i still have my stainless steel whisk acting as one of my electrodes and this is packed full with the stainless steel scouring pad which once again increases that electrical surface area where it can make contact with the water and produce your hydrogen or oxygen gas now because these two layers are electrically separated we really don't have to do any modifying of the container itself besides drill a hole so that the whisk can pass through and the way that i attached the whisk permanently in place was to use a little bit of solder which you can solder stainless steel together and since my whisk electrodes are also stainless steel well it joined to this container no problem now once this container is filled with my electrolyte solution i just insert the lid into this screw it in place and then connect my electrodes now the first electrode i can connect right here the second one is connected to the container itself just by sticking a piece of conductive metal under it which i can then connect to my alligator clamp now before running a single output electrolyzer you have to be very careful not to cause an accidental ignition which could flash back into this container because remember the gas you're now going to be producing is extremely explosive in and of itself it will travel down a tube and into the container so you need a flashback arrestor now what this is is a length of tubing that is sticking under the surface of a volume of water and then another tube at the top which will be your output so when gas is injected into this tube it has to bubble up through the water before it reaches the surface and can be ejected this means if something ignites the output of this gas the flame will travel down into this bottle but instead of continuing through this tube it will hit the surface of the water which will prevent the fire from traveling all the way back if a spark actually occurred inside of this container it would explode absolutely now i would hope that if that were the case the fact that this lid is lined with a plastic sleeve would cause the lid to just blow off instead of the entire container fracturing something like a grenade so overall i'm making this experiment sound quite dangerous because it is having a single output electrolysis device is inherently dangerous but using a bubbler really mitigates the risk so i will move this over here so we have room for the bubbler set this in place and then i'll turn on the power supply and you will see that because the electrodes are in such close proximity in this container once again we only have one actual whisk electrode in this while the container itself acts as the second electrode well it's going to work really well and it will draw a lot of power so the power supply is turned all the way down so when i power it up it will be very low and i can dial it up incrementally already at two volts two and a half volts we're drawing two amps that is a lot of power draw compared to what we were drawing on the earlier versions so already you can tell how much more efficient this setup is that's much less power for a much greater volume of gas i can see that it is slowly creeping down this tube and soon you'll see a bubble right there now that may not seem like much but at two and a half volts that is a ton of gas let me turn this up and we can bring this power supply all the way up to its 10 amp capacity look at that over 10 amps at under 4 volts imagine what would happen if you connected this to a 12 volt battery charger how much current you would be drawing and how fast you would be producing gas now you probably would burn out your battery charger pretty quick because that would be a lot more power than it was rated for but you can produce a lot of gas with this setup if you have a power supply that can handle it now i've attached a longer length of tube so that i can bring this down into some soapy water and give you a demonstration well of how explosive this gas is that is more than enough make a bang i should have been wearing earplugs for that holy smokes that's not going to come across on camera how loud that was it's like a gunshot that was a very tiny volume of gas for a very loud bang and that is why a setup like this it's it's just dangerous there's no way around it combining the output of an electrolysis device it's dangerous stuff but you can get extremely good output now a couple more things about this particular design i've decided that the best way to run this is to connect the positive end of the power supply always to this center electrode because this connects to the whisk and the stainless steel wool which is the easiest component to replace and as we've seen in the earlier models it's always the positive electrode that does the most corroding and so if we connect the negative electrode on this device always to the container itself the container should last basically forever and if we ever have to replace any components in this it will always be the very inexpensive stainless steel whisk and steel scouring pad on the inside so this thing will last basically forever the final design i have to show you in this video is perhaps the most brilliant implementation of a combined output hho device that i have ever seen it may not look like much but this can compete with the most meticulously crafted precision machined devices that anyone has come up with and it costs maybe three dollars requires only one minute to assemble and consists of a sock two scouring pads and a couple of wires the only thing that leaves me feeling a little bit sad about this design is that i was not the first to invent it check out in the video description below i have a link to the source video for the first place where i ever saw this design used the original inventor deserves a lot of credit because this is super clever and i can't wait to show you how it works so this is the completed design and i think the easiest way to show you how this will actually work once we submerge it in some electrolyte is to just build a new one in front of you so the components that we will need are a couple scouring pads a small piece of a sock and a few scrap copper wires with the ends stripped off to assemble this design i'll form the negative electrode on the inside of the sock first by sticking the stripped end of my copper wire deep inside and then i will follow it with the scouring pads now i think i'll actually use two on the inside of this sock and then find another scouring pad for the outside simply because i want to fill this volume on the inside of the sock as much as possible now this wire should be making electrical contact with the pad on the inside forming our first electrode now a third scouring pad can be taken and unrolled over the outside of the sock these pads actually unroll quite easily because that's how they're made in manufacturing they start out in a sock shape and then they're rolled up into a small little pad now once i have this outer scouring pad fairly evenly stretched out this gives us a huge amount of surface area surrounding that inner electrode on the inside of the sock and the two sides are separated by only the very thin distance of the sock material itself this prevents the two electrodes from making direct electrical contact and yet keeps them in very close proximity the last step is to simply take our second copper wire and insert it under and maybe weave it through this outer electrode and then we can twist these wires together so that they are secure and then this thing will be done all right so i've got a container of electrolyte here i am actually risking using potassium hydroxide in this open container for now i'll just be very careful as i'm filming this segment and the first thing i'll do is i will connect up my power supply theoretically it says zero volts right now but i don't really trust that i think as soon as i get a load on this it'll shoot up a little bit so let's slowly submerge this in and we'll see how low of voltage it will take to reach the full 10 amp capacity of this power supply all right still reading zero voltage let's turn this up so currently at 4 volts this is drawing the full 10 amps which is just about the same performance as this design which i showed you last at a fraction of the price and way easier assembly so this thing if you are looking for that combined output this is the way to go now there are some bubbles coming up in this and it's developing a bit of a foam thanks to that potassium hydroxide so i can light these bubbles on fire and you can see that they are explosive but much less so than the bubbles that we were producing with this and that is because currently the top of this container is completely open meaning that the majority of the oxygen is still being formed on the outside of this sock it's forming on this outer electrode and bubbling up to the outside of the container well the hydrogen is generally bubbling up in the middle of the sock this means that the hydrogen and oxygen is still separated by a small distance as long as the top of this container is open but the moment we've sealed this container and fed the gases into a tube they would be combining together before they actually reached the end of that tube and we would have that fully explosive hho mixture in this configuration the bubbles are slightly explosive simply because that oxygen is still partially mixing with the hydrogen in this configuration it's just not quite as mixed as it would be after going through all the tubing once you realize how this design works it doesn't take much thought to realize how much more efficient you could make this if you simply scaled it up if you took something like a knee-high tube sock stuffed it absolutely full with these stainless steel scouring pads and then unrolled a few extra on the outside you would have something that could probably draw i don't know a hundred amps at maybe four or five volts and you would be generating a gallon of gas every 10 seconds it is an awesome design and it's so simple to make even something as large scale as that would probably only cost you 20 dollars wow well i hope you enjoyed this video i know i definitely did you will probably see quite a bit more of my split oxyhydrogen generators in future videos as i find all kinds of uses for the oxygen and hydrogen output as i mentioned that should be very useful for my thermoacoustic projects as the pure hydrogen greatly improves their performance i also have been thinking about making an oxyhydrogen torch and an atomic hydrogen torch which i think you might find particularly interesting if i get around to that if you enjoyed this video leave me some comments below i really enjoy reading your comments it's one of the highlights of my day and it's one of the reasons why i enjoy making videos so leave me comments below that lets me know that you actually cared about this project if you didn't care about this project leave me a comment all the more tell me what i can do better what i should get into next i'd love hearing from you thanks for watching i'll see you next time

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 1,361,225

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Id: d85OX6yEwE0

Length: 30min 3sec (1803 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021