DIY Oxy Hydrogen Torch Using Water Electrolysis

hi everyone in my previous video I demonstrated several designs for oxyhydrogen generators using the electrolysis of water some of my designs Were Meant to make oxygen and hydrogen separately and two of them combined the gases together into a single output this is the more dangerous method for electrolysis because the combined mixture of oxygen and hydrogen is perfectly balanced for an explosive chemical reaction which converts the two gases back into water in the form of very hot Steam in this video I'll demonstrate one practical use for a combined output electrolysis device that being a super hot oxyhydrogen torch that only requires water and electricity to run this one uses about 35 watts to generate a small but extremely intense flame with temperatures exceeding two and a half thousand degrees Celsius almost certainly you'll not be able to see the flame from this distance both because it's very small and also because an oxyhydrogen flame gives off almost no light in the visible spectrum however if I direct the flame at an object that does give off visible light when heated you can get a sense of just how hot this flame is before I go further this is not a project to be replicated at home you've already seen how explosive an oxyhydrogen gas mixture is and you can see I've surrounded my electrolysis device in a steel cage with an extra piece of Steel shielding me if anything goes wrong this is the only way I felt safe enough to film this video as this device could easily explode I am also bubbling the gas through not one but two flashback arrestors which are meant to stop a flame from traveling from the torch through the rubber tubing and all the way back into the electrolysis device when a flame travels backward it should hit the surface of the water in these bottles preventing it from traveling any further if the first bottle doesn't work I'm hoping the second one does all that to say this is an inherently dangerous project not one to be played with lightly so if you're coming from my earlier video on the subject of electrolysis you'll recognize this as the first combined output electrolysis device that I made using a stainless steel food container as the body which doubles as the cathode or negative electrode and a metal whisk packed with a stainless steel scouring PAD as the positive anode this is full of an electrolyte solution plain water and potassium hydroxide to make the water conductive all powered by a 30 volt 10 amp DC power supply this setup draws 10 amps at about 3.6 volts making the total power draw 36 Watts when I turn this on the bubbles give us a good visual of how much gas this generates pretty good the power draw will go down as the system heats up the trick to turning this gas flow into a torch is figuring out a way to ignite it without the flame traveling backward through the tube that requires a few things first of all you need a high flow rate so that the speed of the chemical reaction when the gases burn is offset by the speed of the gas flow moving in the opposite direction pushing the flame out of the tube you can see this effect sometimes with a lighter or a torch that's been turned up too high the flame actually disconnects from the nozzle and floats in midair because the gas flow is exceeding the speed that the flame can travel backward the easiest way to achieve a high flow rate is to use a very narrow tip on the torch which forces the gas pressure to increase unfortunately this effect by itself is not enough to prevent flashback for oxyhydrogen because the mixture Burns so fast I could never make the pressure high enough to completely overcome it the reaction is literally supersonic by using a high flow rate as one part of the equation the other way to keep the flame outside of the nozzle is to reduce the reaction temperature right at the nozzle tip this requires using a nozzle material that can suck up some of the Flame's heat and use the incoming gas flow to keep itself cool by combining these two effects it's possible to cause the oxyhydrogen flame to lose just enough energy if it backflows into the torch that it will not burn fast enough to overcome the gas flow and so the flame stays outside of the tube where it can be put to use in theory despite involving some complex science the actual assembly of this torch was very easy I used a small one milliliter syringe with the back snipped off so that it would fit into the gas outlet tube as yet another precaution against flashback I take some aluminum wool and pack it tightly into the syringe aluminum is very conductive to heat and so if this torch tip fails it's stopping a flame the aluminum should absorb the Heat and extinguish it before it travels further I purchased a variety pack of blunt tip needles to test as my torch nozzles these are not sharp and so in practice they are simply a convenient way to purchase very small diameter stainless steel tubes starting with a variety was necessary because it takes some trial and error to find the correct nozzle size that allows the torch to work without flashback after several tests I found that a needle of 0.63 millimeters in diameter was just about perfect for the gas production of this particular system now something else that I have on hand when this torch is running is a wet square of paper towel fold it over several times so it's thick like a small sponge if you think about how I mentioned the flow rate of this gas is part of the way that flashback is prevented that means I can't turn this system off while the torch is ignited or the flow rate will drop giving us a very exciting test of the counter measures that I've put in place even if the flashback prevention Works I'd rather not rely on it every time I want to turn the torch off so that's where this wet paper towel comes in to extinguish the flame I wrap it around the needle and Pull It upwards liquid water is very good at absorbing energy and so this extinguishes the flame simply by cooling it off so quickly that it goes out now I can turn the power supply off without unnecessary risk when I'm using this torch in very close contact to a surface it sometimes happens that if the flow rate of the torch drops slightly or the needle tip becomes too hot the flame can start to travel backward into the needle slowly in which case my wet paper towel can still be successful at extinguishing the flame even when it's inside of the tube by cooling it from the outside as a safety measure I always keep this ready to use in my empty hand while the torch is held in my other okay I've got the torch fired up and there are a few very interesting things that can be done with a two and a half thousand degree Flame that is more than hot enough to melt aluminum oxide which is the primary component of rubies and sapphires I have a small pile of aluminum oxide on this brick mixed with about five percent green chromium oxide if we melt these two oxides together we get synthetic Ruby these rubies will of course be very small but we should still be able to see them under ultraviolet light okay if successful these rubies should be fluorescent under UV light there we go definitely have rubies this torch also gives me the opportunity to demonstrate an old method of incandescent lighting that you've probably heard of even if you've never seen it before this is a small piece of crushed oyster shell which is primarily composed of calcium carbonate the same stuff that makes up Limestone if you heat calcium carbonate with a hot enough flame it breaks down into calcium oxide which has a very high resistance to heat allowing it to Glow very brightly without actually being damaged by the torch this is a limelight and large models used to be a very common form of stage lighting look at how bright that is that is so crazy if I remove this darkening shield from in front of my face and close my eyes you can see just how much it lights up my face is that working I can see it through my eyelids it's very bright pretty cool stuff now this torch can also easily melt things like steel but only very small pieces at a time since the flame is only the size of a needle point it is quite useful for starting chemical reactions that require a high activation temperature but beyond small-scale chemistry experiments I don't think there's a lot of practical use for a torch of this size perhaps with the exception of jewelry work this would be great for welding very tiny wires whoa I just accidentally sealed my needle tip by melting this steel wire I touched the tip of the needle to the molten steel whoops [Laughter] after the first time that a needle does that it actually works a little bit better as the torch nozzle because the steel on the inside of the needle has partially oxidized by that point so often I have to burn in the needles like that extinguish the flame and now this will work much better well I hope you enjoyed this project leave me comments below if you have more ideas for what I should do with this torch I still read all of the comments on my videos and so I really appreciate when you leave them even if it's just general feedback or well whatever you have to say thank you for watching this video I'll see you next time foreign foreign

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 1,442,508

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Id: 7M4yqcO_pPo

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021