Tested Builds a Hydrogen Converter

alright guys I have a challenge it casts challenges we love challenges the hydrogen economy is ramping up and I think that we should make some hydrogen in the shop you want to have a way to have hydrogen here anytime you need yeah absolutely I think we could probably do that yeah I remember high school science you use electrolysis I like DC power separates hydrogen water into hydrogen and oxygen and you can collect the gas with a balloon off a hose at the top of the thing how difficult could it be it's the most abundant element in the universe indeed all right so here's what I want 15 liters of hydrogen by the end of the day good luck okay norm I went shopping and we got a ton of stuff most of this came from Home Depot but they're a couple of specialized parts okay we're gonna build a hydrolysis rig and electrolysis for water rig using plans originally posted on YouTube by the king of random we're gonna modify his rig a little bit though his spits out he separates the hydrogen and oxygen releases them both as a gas together out the same vent we're gonna do two separate poles and anode and a cathode oxygen will come off one hydrogen will come off the other because that means we can collect the hydrogen gas separately and I think we should have a pretty good result out of that so we gotta make the anode and the cathode you got stainless steel for that big sheet of stainless steel 20 gauge I've got a whole bunch of acrylic tube I've got a variety of weird plumbing fittings let's get building okay docking shin twist twist I suppose there we go that was perfect plumbers this one insert your tubes yep yep that's good okay good a little bit okay so we've got a bunch of hauls a bunch of different sizes what these are gonna do is give us a lot of surface area for the anodes and the cathode so the more surface area we have the more hydrogen more oxygen or produce and sticking to the sides of these on one side oxygen one side hydrogen on one side oxygen one side hydrogen and then but before we do that I'm gonna sand them up a little bit first just to give them a little bit more surface area all right it's in the belt sander assembly norm so the way it's gonna work is that the brackets are gonna fit up inside the head bolts are gonna go up we're going to connect our electrodes to them to generate the hydrogen and oxygen and then we're gonna actually run these plates through a couple of bolts and dangle them down into the water so what we're going to do it we made some thin plates that are an inch and a half to made some thick slates that are three inches we're gonna do a couple of thin plates four thick plates and a couple more thin plates so we fill up as much space as we can in the circular tube more surface area put the brackets on either side space them out with washers is this any too tall I know we measured okay all right this looks pretty good I'm pleased without it turned out we got a lot of surface area when we put some hooks and juice up to one end huh get up the other end hopefully hydrogen oxygen to come out which one's the anode whichever one we want yours is the anode whichever one has the best marks okay I know all right let's fit them in okay let's see this is a test fitting insert your towers yeah sure that on YouTube that's not bad I almost think we knew what we were doing this is the rig we got a lot of surface here we can generate a lot of hydrogen a lot of oxygen but before we get to that we got to build a stand all right let's do it all right that's it electrolysis rings built we got to stand we're gonna tie it down we're gonna carry it outside we got some special surprises and let's go test it yeah let's see how it works okay no one we're back we're outside we have our electrolysis ring set up it's full of water we're running current through it what's happening inside the tubes well this is a basic science experiment we're taking water h2o and splitting it into its two component molecules hydrogen and oxygen now to do that all you had to do is one current through DC current is the current through it and where does that current come from well you could plug this into a power supply into your car battery but we wanted clean energy and what cleaner energy is there then the Sun yeah so we got a commercially available solar panel it's the kind of you might put on the roof of your recreational vehicle to power small electronics during the day and it produces about 22 volts of power about a hundred watts of energy and we're running that through the through the tubes right now to split hydrogen and oxygen at the anode and cathode respectively right and with this type of hydrogen converter and generator the more voltage you run through the more hydrogen the faster that process happens exactly so we could have used it and say a 12-volt car battery that's the traditional way you do this in high school science experiments but we're gonna produce a lot more energy because the panel is actually producing 22 volts of rather than 12 volts now the other important ingredient is water and this isn't just normal tap water no normal tap water has a ton of impurities salts calcium carbonate stuff like that and the side effect of running normal tap water and electrolysis rig is that you can produce unpleasant things that you don't want to breathe like chlorine gas it's very dangerous and very corrosive so we use distilled water but distilled water is not particularly conductive on its own so we have to add our own electrolyte in this case potassium hydroxide so that the electricity can go in one side move through the water come out the other side and split the hydrogen and oxygen from the water in the process now a note on potassium hydroxide it's extremely caustic and dangerous stuff yeah you gotta be careful if we're gonna try to recreate this experiment yeah don't I mean don't let it touch your skin wear gloves wear goggles wear a face shield if you have it if you happen to get any on your skin it's important to have some sort of mild acid around so we have a big jar of acetic acid ik acid which is just vinegar if we had any spills or any accidents we could pour on two helpfully stop the burn before it happens look at the machine I think it's working you have oxygen coming out being released harmlessly into the atmosphere and then the hydrogen bubbles being funneled into this giant cleared garbage bag and over time we gather a bunch of hydrogen alright guys the rake looks great how does it do well you asked for 15 liters the hydrogen I think we got about 15 milliliters that's I'm no mathematician but that's off by a couple zeros it's only two orders a night but you didn't actually make hydrogen what's coming out of this one oxygen yeah all right oxygen over here hydrogen over there now the upshot from this is this is not the most efficient process I can clearly case you couldn't tell we use clean energy to produce the hydrogen which was a good step in the right direction but there's much more efficient industrial processes that you can use to make convert commercial hydrogen at scale for things like hydrogen powered cars and hydrogen powered tools and all the stuff that we're excited about so the better way to get hydrogen than making an electrolysis rig in your garage probably go down to your local gas supplier and buy a big tank vise okay all right and then we'll start working on converting my shop to hydrogen power well that's phase two

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,928,343

Keywords: Hydrogen (Chemical Element), toyota mirai, hydrogen generator, fuel cell, hydrolysis, hho generator, hydrogen on demand, water powered, how to make a hydrogen generator, hydrogen car conversion, diy hydrogen generator, hydrogen engine, electrolysis of water, hydrogen car, how to, car conversion, hydrogen cell, dual fuel, wet cell, hydrogen production, adam savage, water fuel, adam savage tested, tested adam savage

Id: Szv30aUEsxM

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2015