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Hydrogen fun


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  • 5 months later...

the 9 volts battery operated version of getting the exsplosive rocket feul mixture from water , that ive posted from the net looks a bit slow especially with a 9 volts battery so try 12 volts and change the electrodes to the diode version i used in one of my postings in the playing with hydrogen , topic  and use some salt to get it going faster.  as for sparks  just use a push button pezio electric ignitor  or a few batteries and a transformer used in reverse  and a push button

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Splitting a water molacule to get oxygen and hydrogen is called electrolysis. I'll try to explain this as well as I can I've not done chemestry for many years and even then I didn't do too well, so forgive me if I make any errors.

H2O (Water)  is a polar molacule and in its pure form is quite a good insulator. When another ionic compound is disolved in the water like NaCl (salt) for example 2H+ and 4OH- ions are formed and the water becomes a moderatly good conductor. When electrolysis is performed on water the 4H+ ions are attracted to the negativley charged cathode and the 2OH- ions to the anode. The atoms break off these ions at the respective electrode and form O2 at the annode and 2H2 at the cathode, because water is H2O twice as much hydrogen is produced as oxygen.

This is why salt speeds up the process the tap water won't conduct that well but when you add NaCl it gets more conductive and the reaction speeds up. Adding NaCl is not a good idea because toxic chlorine gas is formed and the solution will become a concentrated solution of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda)

You're better of adding sodium barcarbonate, you'll still produce a sodium hydroxide solution but you won't have any chlorine just carbon dioxide and oxygen. You can also neutralise the caustic sodium hydroxide by adding vineger after you've finished. You could even try using caustic soda instead of salt or sodium bicarbonate, you can buy it from the chemists to unblock drains with.

Oh and you're better off using a constant current source instead of constant voltage and you can make one of these with an LM317 regulator, and carbon rods are the best thing to use for electrodes.

Here are some interesting links on electrolysis:
http://www.nmsea.org/Curriculum/7_12/electrolysis/electrolysis.htm
http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cact/c123/eltlysis.html
http://chem.lapeer.org/chem2docs/chlorine.html
http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview/bp/ch20/faraday.html
http://www.holzwerken.de/museum/links/electrolysis_explanation.phtml

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