Hydrogen! It’s a highly flammable gas that seems way too cool to be easy to come by. And yet, it’s actually trivial to make it out of water if you know how. [Maciej Nowak] has shown us how to do just that with his latest build.
The project in question is a simple hydrogen generator that relies on the electrolysis of water. Long story short, run a current through water and you can split H2O molecules up and make H2 and O2 molecules instead. From water, you get both hydrogen to burn and the oxygen to burn it in! Even better, when youย do burn the hydrogen, it combines with the oxygen to make water again! It’s all too perfect.
This particular generator uses a series of acrylic tanks. Each is fitted with electrodes assembled from threaded rods to pass current through water. The tops of the tanks have barbed fittings which allow the gas produced to be plumbed off to another storage vessel for later use. The video shows us the construction of the generator, but we also get to see it in actionโboth in terms of generating gas from the water, and that gas later being used in some fun combustion experiments.
Pedants will point out this isn’t really just a hydrogen generator, because it’s generating oxygen too. Either way, it’s still cool. We’ve featured a few similar builds before as well.
(Pedantic editor’s note: Because this build doesn’t separate the H2 from the O2, what you get is a stoichiometric mix, or HHO, or “Oxyhydrogen“. By virtue of being in exactly the right ratio to combust, this stuff is significantly more explosive than pure H2. Be careful!)
Just be aware that if you don’t separate out the hydrogen and oxygen, what you get is a stoichiometrically ideal explosive mixture of the two gases, and it’s hugely dangerous. Pure hydrogen is pretty safe. This stuff is absolutely not and the slightest spark will set it off.
(Not saying it isn’t useful, though. Wikipedia says an oxihydrogen blowpipe will melt firebrick. Preferably at a safe distance…)
It’s also fun. I’ve restored vintage motorcycle tanks that had rust on the inside. Warm water with sodium carbonate, put a clean steel rod in it with a 3D printed cap with a vent hole. Attach one end of the power supply to the tank, another to the rod and let it rip. Used a 24V/5A power supply. To make sure it worked I used a lighter. When it works, oh boy does it make epic bangs.
And yes, oxyhydrogen was the first welding gas, but no one uses that. This just makes explosive gas which is fun.
Aren’t microwelders for jewelery still using hho torches?
Yeah, this is a bunch of sharp acrylic shrapnel waiting to hit you at the slightest spark.
Really really bad idea to build an electrolyzer this way.
Yeah that’s the whole point of a hydrogen generator… Mmmm scary loud bubbles
Indeed! One of my close calls as a teenager tinkering around in my grandfather’s garage involved a similar device. The goal was to make a rocket. I didn’t understand the difference between controlled burning and detonation or that you should separate fuels from oxidizers. It was a dry day and some static from my clothes was the likely ignition source. I stood up and looked away from the generator a moment before it detonated, so my face, eyes, and neck were spared from the bulk of the blast. The scars on my arm and shoulder from large pieces of sharp rigid plastic debris have faded a bit over the the last 25 years, but damage to my hearing lingers.
Now make an engine run off of it and make the waterengine conspiracy crowd go crazy.
Not a piston engine, but doable. Only minor hurdles regarding street legality. Like …
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RVETCyR-CoM
Oh the Brown’s gas water engine…the fuel of the future and a health drink as well….LOL !
i was under the impression that a trivial mechanical divider between the two electrodes was enough to mostly separate the H and O. can’t believe they put the effort into building this contraption without bothering to do that
You are correct. Since the O2 / H2 will bubble upward from the electrodes, the pass-thru / bottom of the divider just needs to be slightly lower than the electrodes, and you would have virtually perfect separation. I agree that it is silly that they didn’t bother taking this easy additional step – you can always combine the two gasses later, but separating them once they’re mixed together – not any easy task…
As mentioned by others, it would be much safer to store the two gasses separated rather than together.
high performance browns gas generators have a very small separation between the electrodes which precludes separating the gas streams as the bubble size is similar to the gap between the electrodes
You are correct. Since the O2 / H2 will bubble upward from the electrodes, the pass-thru / bottom of the divider just needs to be slightly lower than the electrodes, and you would have virtually perfect separation. I agree that it is silly that they didn’t bother taking this easy additional step – you can always combine the two gasses later, but separating them once they’re mixed together – not any easy task…
As mentioned by others, it would be much safer to store the two gasses separated rather than together.
I remember this was a standard science experiment at school when I was a kid, and produced reasonably pure hydrogen which popped in a satisfying way when ignited, rather than exploding
Not a hydrogen generator. An HHO generator. As somebody who has built a hydrogen generator in order to collect and compress the hydrogen, misleading article titles like this really annoy me.
I know of people in my region who were killed by this hack, they were running a brushcutter engine on it, until it ignited.
And as an added bonus, it generates hexavalent chrome!