Hydrogen Fuel Cell - Is Hydrogen Car the Future? + Electrolysis

can you guess what this is well the title of the video is already a spoiler but this is called a fuel cell basically it generates electricity using some fuel in a chemical reaction and to be more specific this fuel cell is using hydrogen and oxygen this bubbly process that you are now seeing on the screen could actually end up into electrical energy and spin an electric motor for example and by the way this energy could also do this so be careful with that but anyway in this video I want to explain to you the entire process of getting energy from water and like that you should understand how the hydrogen car works and how the fuel cell could generate electrical energy I promise you this will be a very interesting experiment so let's get started okay so for today's experiment I will use two devices one is the fuel cell and the other one is the electrolysis device and don't worry I'll go over each one in a moment but you see a hydrogen vehicle could be of two types with combustion or electric but before I explain you the difference is just a quick word from our sponsor hey guys PCB way sponsoring this video and let me just tell about their services for example look how awesome their prototyping pcbs are and you can get this for only five dollars they are so professional and they will make your project work a lot better and to order such pcbs you only need a few minutes on their website where you can select any configuration that you want for your boards along with that you can also order the snd stencil for soldering the components using solder paste and you can also use their services for flexible pcbs and create some unique projects and if you want to make your project start to finish you can get the pcbs assembled together with the mod injected part or maybe 3D printed metal parts or other CNC Services all with PCB way okay guys so as I was telling you hydrogen cars could work with a combustion engine or an electric motor hydrogen is quite explosive and energy dense so you could use it just as a gasoline motor and create control explosions moving pistons and so on just as a normal combustion motor but adapted to hydrogen but that is not very efficient actually is less efficient than a gasoline motor but on the other side instead of combustion with hydrogen we can use the fuel cell which is three times more efficient than a combustion engine and basically this type of car is exactly as any other electric car such as the Tesla cars but instead of using rechargeable batteries in this case it uses a hydrogen fuel cell to create electrical energy we store the hydrogen in high pressure tank we feed it to the fuel cell it creates energy and also as a waste it creates water the energy is then passed to the ESC and the electric motor and that's how it works more or less but how does the fuel cell work and how can we obtain hydrogen efficiently and cost effective well let's go step by step and we start with the electrolysis device and I bought this for only 7 euros from AliExpress but you could easily make a homemade one if you want using some plastic containers and some metal electrodes and anyway this device has two metal rods where we Supply the power positive and negative for the anode and cathode and we fill this with water and this device will split the water molecules and what is water made of well hydrogen and oxygen which is exactly what we need in order to split the atoms current must pass through the water from one electrode to the other one so we can't use normal water I mean we could but is not conductive enough and to fix that we add some sodium hydroxide to act as a good electrolyte so we would have a better flow of ions between the anode and the cathode and you can get this for just a few dollars from Amazon but make sure that you won't get in contact with it otherwise it will burn your skin and before we make the experiment let me show to you how electrolysis works we have a plastic container and two electrodes we apply positive at this electrode and negative at this one then we add water we also add some sodium hydroxide so now the water is conductive enough so big current flow is created between the electrodes and when the current passes the ions migrate to the electrode with the opposite charge at the cathode the sodium ions will gain electrons and are reduced to form sodium metal the sodium ions will go towards the cathode and the hydroxide ions will go towards the anode the hydrogen ions from the water also gain some electrons and they are reduced to form hydrogen gas or H2 and on the other side at the anode the hydroxide ions will lose electrons and are oxidized to form oxygen gas O2 and also water H2O so overall the electrolysis of sodium hydroxide in water produces sodium metal hydrogen gas oxygen gas and water the sodium metal and the hydrogen gas are produced at the cathode while the oxygen gas and the water are produced at the anode so that's how we can get hydrogen and oxygen so as you can see this device has two electrodes and these are into separate containers water has connections on the lower part but by having the electrodes in separate containers we ensure that we will only have hydrogen here and oxygen here because mixing hydrogen and oxygen in a confined container is quite dangerous because that mix is highly explosive so let's make the entire process in a plastic container I mix the water with some sodium hydroxide so mix it well I also change the rubber tubes with some longer ones and also added these plastic valves I then add that water mixture to the electrolysis device I connect power from my power supply I will apply around 20 volts and the moment I connect the power we can already see some bubbles coming out hydrogen on one side and oxygen on the other side and we can see how the pressure is pushing the water downwards and just to show to you that this is hydrogen I get some soap and water and I create the bubble using the hydrogen gas and to make it explosive I also add some oxygen from the other tube and now I light it up okay let's see it one more time foreign so guys that was a very strong Bank hydrogen has a lot of energy and could be dangerous especially when mixed with oxygen anyway we now have the hydrogen and the oxygen so let's add the fuel cell to this setup and by the way the brown color stuff inside of the water could be manganese dioxide that is formed as a residue okay so the fuel cell has four inputs or outputs two on one side and two more on the other side we connect the O2 on the cathode so the side with the black perimeter on the other side we connect the H2 the side with the red perimeter and during the chemical reaction water will be produced and we can use the other two outputs to remove that water but for the experiment I will first try to close those outputs using these rubber plugs and to use them better I'll use some hot glue and fix them in place on a piece of wood board and now they are a lot easier to use the fuel cell has an anode and a cathode just as a normal battery and in the middle in between we have a membrane which will be the electrolyte so the hydrogen is fed into the anode compartment of the fuel cell while the oxygen is fed into the cathode compartment the anode and the cathode are separated by this electrolyte membrane that allows the ions to pass through but not the electrons at the anode the hydrogen molecules are split into protons h plus and electrons e minus in a process that is called oxidation so the protons are released into the electrolyte while the electrons are traveling to the external Circuit of the cathode creating a flow of electrical current and that's how we can create our electrical energy and meanwhile a decathode the oxygen molecules react with the protons and the electrons that have traveled to the external circuit from the anode and this process is called reduction and produces water or h2o and releases additional electrons this is similar to a battery but is using hydrogen and oxygen and also compared with a normal battery a fuel cell needs a constant fuel in order to work and it's not like a rechargeable battery that's why it's called a fuel cell and not a battery cell okay so now that we know how both devices work let's assemble the final setup so the electrolysis device will create hydrogen and oxygen and that is fed into the fuel cell and used to create electrical energy at these two metal pins at the output I want to add as a load a small electric motor so we could see its rotation and I also want to add a basic voltmeter and an ammeter to measure the voltage and the current I use the same according rubber tubes to connect the gases and I also use those small plastic valves the voltmeter is connected in parallel to the fuel cell and the ammeter is connected in series with the electrical motor and the experiment setup is ready so I add the sodium hydroxide water once again into the electrolysis device I first apply power to the electrolysis process and we can see how the hydrogen and the oxygen volume is going up because the small valves are closed and for this to work we need to take out the yellow rubber caps so the gases could flow I didn't knew that so I take those out and I open the valves and the fuel cell is now fed with gases and just like that the motor starts to spin I measure a current flow of around 20 milliamps without a load but when I start the motor with my hand we get up to 50 milliamps at a voltage of one volt so that's around 50 milliwatts of power but obviously an electric car would use some higher quality fuel cells and a lot more than just one actually if you want you could buy a stack together some fuel cells from AliExpress as well but those are too expensive for a simple experiment but like that you could create enough voltage and current to be able to charge an electric car and that's how they work and usually the efficiency of this process from electrical power to gas then to liquid hydrogen and then back to electrical power is around 60 percent which is not that bad is still better than a normal gasoline combustion engine and the electric motors could get up to 80 or 90 efficiency compared with only 20 or 30 efficiency for the gasoline combustion Motors and personally I see a good future for the hydrogen electric cars all we need is a good and safe hydrogen Network to supply all the cars around the world and that's the difficult part so now you should know how the hydrogen cars work how the electrolysis is made and how a fuel cell could create electrical power using hydrogen I hope that you have learned something new and if so consider giving me a like or comment below thanks again and see you later guys hey guys so that was another project and I hope that you like it as you all know to buy all these modules a huge help from you is from patreon so if you want to support me you can support me there but also just commenting below giving me a like or sharing this video it will also support my channel so thank you very much to all my patrons and to you guys

Channel: Electronoobs

Views: 99,077

Keywords: fuel, cell, hydrogen, oxygen, electrolysis, homemade, power, battery, electric car, oxidation, how it works, combustion, motor, kit, experiment, aliexpress

Id: sTmDFRuFU00

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023