500 lb. koolaid man

Recently, I've become very interested in the subject of turning normal water into hydrogen, capable of being used for running engines or gas for torches. What I'm interested in specifically is a smaller scale than running a car off water, that's too complex. Anyways, this thread will be for open discussion on the subject, and for my tests of trying to make one of these "fuel cells".

a dune buggy that runs off water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ3juM6vHwg

This video is also amazing when it comes to info http://youtube.com/watch?v=vm5JhpWt4GQ

Another video definitely worth watching http://youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

This guy makes a lot of sense to me and most of my basic ideas of things to try have come from his videos.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ThePowerTube

Maybe one of these fuel cells could run an rc gas or nitro engine? The first water powered rc, now that sounds cool.

From a couple of hours of watching tons of videos and studying the simplest wat to make a water fuel cell, this is what I'm thinking.

Feel free to post comments, questions, etc.

hands without shadows

I have experimented with this a fair bit, mainly for the cool "pop" Hydrogen makes when it burns Basically passing electricity through water separated the Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms. Oxygen bubbles come from the positive anode and hydrogen bubbles come from the negative cathode, in a ratio of one Oxygen atom for every two Hydrogen atoms. In your design the product will be a mixture of Hydrogen and Oxygen (in the perfect mixture for an explosion).

A 9v battery will work as a power supply - for about 2 minutes - and a 12v battery will work ok but it will discharge eventually. I used a converted computer power supply, the same one I use to power my chargers. At one point when everything was running full throttle with a lot of salt and clean electrodes I was drawing somewhere around 13 amps and I filled a balloon in under 7 minutes. I used a regular pop bottle, glued a Y tubing adapter inside of the lid, glued electrodes (copper wires separated by rubber washers) in one end of the Y, and attached a balloon to the other end of the Y to collect gas. Carbon electrodes worked better than copper ones but wore out very fast, your stainless steel will work but I think regular steel would work better. Your whole "rubber washer, stainless steel washer" confuses me and isn't needed.

To harvest any usable gas for an engine from this the Hydrogen and Oxygen cant be mixed and the gasses need to be pressurized, which will require more than hot glue and a peanut butter jar.

500 lb. koolaid man

Thanks for the info hands without shadows, I appreciate it.

I did a simple test today using a plastic container, 2 springs, and a 12v plug-in(whatever they are called).

First, I tried the negative end as a bolt because I saw similar in a youtube video but it was lager scale, well that didn't work. Then I tried a spring on the negative end, leaving just the positive wire in the water like I did with the bolt. That didn't work. I added a spring to both the negative and positive, and wahoo, bubbles. It's a start. I just wanted to start by making sure I could make bubbles. More tests soon, I think next I'm going to create a heat sink looking thing for the negative end, and try that out with the positive end on the spring again.

hands without shadows

Greater surface area and small distance between electrodes seem to have the greatest affect on gas production. Perhaps two intertwined but not touching springs (like DNA) or a plate and a heatsink would have good results? Definitely post up the results of your heatsink/spring combo and any further progress you make.

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I was reading some time ago that it takes more power to make hydrogen then the power you can get from it on a large scale.

calvino

now that would be cool, i have also found out that baking soda makes the most bubbles, just a tip[8D]

Foxy

Not true. You know those videos of huge hydrogen bomb explosions (the most destructive weapons we are able to make)? That's from one party balloon full of hydrogen. It was a hydrogen explosion that created the contents of the universe, and it's the fuel for our sun and many other stars. It's pretty serious stuff.

On the subject of making it and using it, Mythbusters did a show about trying to run cars on it, and sure enough, nearly blew themselves up. Be careful with hydrogen it's dangerous stuff.

maxxdout

I remember a few years ago, my teacher had this big box and he poured a cup of water in it. 4 cups came out!!!!

RCtruckRacer

Newton's law of Conservation of Energy states that matter is neither created nor destroyed. Getting 4 cups of water from one sounds like a some magic trick - like pouring milk in a newspaper funnel...

As I understand it, the hydrogen bomb is a staged weapon that uses nuclear fission to heat and compress fusion fuel (depleted uranium) to thermonuclear temperatures. The "fuel" used for the fission stage are isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. I don't think they actually use hydrogen.

As far as using water as a supply of hydrogen for fuel (electrolosys), it has been an on-going process for years now. When someone makes a water fuel cell that actually works, they will be rich since they will have found a fuel source that can displace oil! Electrolosys is a very inefficient method of producing hydrogen for a power source, far too inefficient to use for just about anything. In a car for instance, the electrical system used to seperate the molecules would run out of juice before the car got very far. Stanley Meyer (spelling?) supposedly has patents on water fuel cells that ran cars. As far as I know, no one has duplicated his work - work which came under a ton of scrutiny. Conspiracy therorists claim he was murdered. Who knows?

Fun Topic!!!!

drag racer

they have an rc car that runs on water alread. i dunno how it works though. Interesting topic.

CustomTamiyas4Life

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I think the water powered rc is simply steam powered.

hands without shadows

RC concept version: http://jalopnik.com/cars/alternative...ays-220557.php

"Toy" version: http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/tech_toy.htm

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Ok I did not put it right let me restate what I was thinking. hydrogen is a green fuel and has a very good power potential but you need to convert water into hydrogen and it's done most of the time with some kind of other fuel gas, coal fired electric plant. diesel fuel heated to a vapor has a lot of power and gas has a danger people don't see it also has a very good power potential so yes hydrogen is dangerous but so is 20 gallons of gas. As far as the hydrogen bomb I think but not 100% that hydrogen was the catalyst for the reaction for nuclear fusion. We went to the moon on hydrogen powered fuel cells and it is a abundant fuel and only byproduct is water but the real problem today is battary technology because you still need to store the power.

calvino

that was TOTALLY STAGED, there were prob 3 cups of water in there and the teacher prob had some trip device... yeah, RCtruckRacer stated it best, PS, RCtruckracer, loved your old avitar

500 lb. koolaid man

First off, thanks for all the responses and interest in this thread.

I made a conductor out of a steel coat hanger and got the same results or not as good as I did with two springs(fresh water again), so I didn't even bother with taking a picture of that.

Then a bell rang in my head, try salt water since I'm on a canal so it's rite there. WOW. I recommend to anyone that experiments with getting hydrogen out of water to use saltwater if it's available, or I guess make some with fresh water and salt. I'd have to say somewhere in between 2-5 times more bubbles then before. I'm not gonna use fresh water for this project ever again. Strange though how fast the water turned green(within a minute) and why it turned green in the first place. I did two trials and I took most of the pictures fast so that's why there's only green water in a couple of pictures.

Next up is either a car battery and bigger sized everything else, or I'll keep making more things like I did with the coat hanger to see how much hydrogen I can really get it to produce.

Question:
I asked a chemistry teacher if there's an easy way to get only hydrogen bubbles and he said yes, only catch the air from the negative end of the connections because that's the hydrogen end, and the positive produces only oxygen bubbles. And I asked him that as long as the positive end is giving a connection, would it make sense to leave whatever is on that end small and make the hydrogen end large to create a lot of bubbles and he said yes. Now on the other hand, an engineer in my neighborhood said different... he said using a battery you can only cerate bubbles that have both oxygen and hydrogen in them. And I asked about if there's any easy way to get only hydrogen, and he said yes, hydrogen is lighter than oxygen so it will float to the top, so for example a tube catching the air that's located at the top of a jug or whatever would get you only hydrogen. He also said that to get the best connection / reaction, it's a mutual thing between the positive and negative terminals of a battery so you would want the things in the water to be about the same size. I don't know who's rite or if they are both rite at one thing but not another.[sm=spinnyeyes.gif] So could someone just tell me who's correct Or... should the "medal test objects" be around the same size or not, and how to possibly get only hydrogen.
Sorry to make you have to read all that[sm=49_49.gif], and thanks for any replies.

Now here's the pictures. 1st pic is just showing the thing I made out of a coat hanger. Also note that the power source I've been using produces a lousy 3 / 10 of an amp when about 13 amps is recommended for this project(2nd pic). Also the spring worked well too as shown in the last pic where I switched the connections.

hands without shadows

Try holding a match over the jar when making bubbles, you should get a nice popping effect from the Hydrogen burning.

The green stuff is iron or copper hydroxide, its produced when hydroxide eats at your copper or iron electrodes.

The chemistry teacher is right, Hydrogen comes from the negative electrode.

VIPER458

[quote]ORIGINAL: 500 lb. koolaid man


Question:
I asked a chemistry teacher if there's an easy way to get only hydrogen bubbles and he said yes, only catch the air from the negative end of the connections because that's the hydrogen end, and the positive produces only oxygen bubbles. And I asked him that as long as the positive end is giving a connection, would it make sense to leave whatever is on that end small and make the hydrogen end large to create a lot of bubbles and he said yes. Now on the other hand, an engineer in my neighborhood said different... he said using a battery you can only cerate bubbles that have both oxygen and hydrogen in them. And I asked about if there's any easy way to get only hydrogen, and he said yes, hydrogen is lighter than oxygen so it will float to the top, so for example a tube catching the air that's located at the top of a jug or whatever would get you only hydrogen. He also said that to get the best connection / reaction, it's a mutual thing between the positive and negative terminals of a battery so you would want the things in the water to be about the same size. I don't know who's rite or if they are both rite at one thing but not another.[sm=spinnyeyes.gif] So could someone just tell me who's correct Or... should the "medal test objects" be around the same size or not, and how to possibly get only hydrogen.
Sorry to make you have to read all that[sm=49_49.gif], and thanks for any replies.




here is something i found online. it seems like a pretty simple way to separate the 2 gasses

edit: hmm i cant figure out what i did to quote myself. oh well...

mhefler

although I haven't been trying to seporate the gases, this method show was one of my fist experiments, I used 2 stanless steal bolts and some pvc, it works great for seporating the gases but do to the large area of seporation between the anode and cathode I found it to be inefficiant. my best method of creating hydrogen has been a motor cycle battery, using just plain water the first time and conecting it to the battery in my car it took me about 3 min to fill a party balloon but the gasses are not seporated, using water w/ baking soda increased my production rate by about 30%. I have also found that if you take the disks out of a hard drive screw them together w/ plastic screws and place a rubber washer between them w/ a seporation of about 1/16 of an inch you get the same production as w/ the battery.

500 lb. koolaid man

hands without shadows, thanks again for the info! And you said the negative hydrogen like the chemist(long time family friend, chem teacher at my high school) said that leads to more separation options, good. And ya I put a flame up to the bigger bubbles, it did ignite.

VIPER458, thanks for the picture, it makes perfect sense and I just might try something like that in the future. That seems like the simple way to catch only hydrogen rather than try to capture it by surrounding it with for example an upside down cup over the hydrogen end as I originally planned. The other method is using the fact that hydrogen is lighter than oxygen, so run them both into a seperate container and put a catcher at the top to catch the floating hydrogen.

mhefler, glad to hear about your success. I've heard motorcycle batteries are a good option, but would that be any better than a car battery? I don't know if there's an amp difference between the two. All I know is a motorcycle battery is cheaper than car batteries in general, so it's good news if they work better. BTW the more surface area of the reactors, the better.

I asked another knowledgeable family friend if it takes more power no matter what if you see more bubbles and the answer was yes. For example using the exact same everything trying tap water then salt water(more bubbles), using salt water still uses more energy.

I've come up with a good quick theory about how it's not efficient at all and takes up way too much power to get hydrogen using electrolysis, solar power. For $100 you can get a solar panel that will produce either 12V or 16V. Put that on a car roof, run it to a separate car battery which it is enough power to keep the battery charged, then run that to the hydrogen producer, or just run the power right off the solar panel to the hydrogen producer however that's not as good of an idea because of shade. Anyways, it won't be enough hydrogen to run a car alone, however if a hydrogen line was then connected directly to your carburetor, it would then be a hybrid car saving lots of cash on gas. This would be a great project for a low cost used car.

I'm now starting to think about biodiesel, maybe I'll start a thread for that soon.

-Inverted-

We are collecting oil from a local resturaunt owned by a friend of the family with similar intentions. We have been looking to start building a processer soon.

Nick2618

solar panel is also not a good idea becasue of nite time. I do most of my driving at night. [:@][:@] But Bio-diesel is cool but i think it would be better to run off vegtable oil. Then you could go to a resturant and take there old oil for free. Cuase they pay to have someone take it away they would love to give it away. Also i dont think you need to do any conversions to a diesel engine to run vegatable oil just drop it in and drive! The only problem is there is not a lot of cars that are diesel. I think they only cars around that are diesel are thejetta and some old mercedes.

500 lb. koolaid man

Used vegetable oil from restaurants is turned into diesel. Basic point, you can't take straight vegie oil and drop it in a diesel tank, there's a process to turn it into biodiesel. It has to be filtered(if used) and thinned out, and you want to get 100% of the glycerin and water out of it, long story, I'm still trying to find the simplest way myself. Some steps can be skipped, and different methods lead to different things, like for example, if you don't mix chemicals into the biodiesel brew then you need a small tank for petroleum diesel to start the car, then flip a switch to change to the main tank, biodiesel. Looks like I need to start a new thread for biodiesel, hopefully tomorrow. I'd prefer to keep this thread strictly hydrogen. Thanks for all the interest.

pythonfan

My Feedback: (1)

man this was a long read wish i could help, but i like the idea on what ur doing.

oh and hers the rc hydrogen car http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/rc.htm

and more pics and price cause everyone has that laying around http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/store/h_cell.htm

http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/rcpic.htm

vertigo72480

check out www.greasecar.com/ and http://www.diesel-therm.com/vegetable-oil-kit.htm or just Google "biodiesel conversion kit." You'll be amazed with what turns up. My next vehicle will run on diesel.

500 lb. koolaid man

Wow! I was watching TV a few minutes ago and a Honda commercial just came on about a new fuel cell car from Honda, it's zero emissions since the only exhaust is water, and it's fueled by hydrogen similar to going to a gas station(I wonder how they're gonna put those all over the states?). COOL THOUGH!
The commercial also said this website: www.fcx.honda.com