Making a Simple Hydrogen Generator from Washers

[Jethro_uk]

Actually it's HHO

lovely bit of real DIY here

Brian: It's a clip of a guy using a couple of M3 rods and washers to make a reverse voltaic pile that electrolyses water.

[Dave Plowman (News]

And all you need is plenty free electricity.

[williamwright]

I used to bite my nails like that chap. Then when I was 16 a girl told me that I'd never get a shag until I had nice nails. So I stopped biting them.

Bill

[Tim+]

But HHO isn?t a gas. It?s a gas mixture.

Tim

[Chris Hogg]

and highly explosive. Many decades ago you could get a little I think battery-powered soldering or welding torch that burnt an oxy-hydrogen mixture directly from the electrolysis of water, much like in the video but on a smaller scale. They were small enough to hold in the palm of your hand. No longer available AFAIK, presumably because they were regarded as dangerous. Perhaps they had a tendency to explode. Does anyone remember it, or even own one?

[Chris Hogg]

Another interesting if not entirely successful example of an oxy-hydrogen generator from a modified butane lighter. I think the one I've just described above was of similar size.

[Chris Hogg]

Try this

[Sysadmin]

We had a professional 'water welder' at work used for welding stainless steel (304N) reactor components. Excellent piece of kit.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

And the crucial issue is how efficient is it. One supposes that you need electricity to run it so if it takes more than the hydrogen you make to power it, then what is the point. Bear in mind that Hydrogen is only good if really compressed and being a small molecule it will get through most materials. So you need to find a place in a very sunny place with limitless water to convert, one assumes you shove oxygen back into the atmosphere and take the hydrogen and compress it and flog it. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Back in the day I'm sure we all made hydrogen and oxygen from water using electricity. We captured the gasses from the bubbles that rose around the electrodes and used a large test tube for it. If you upended the hydrogen one below a naked flame there was a nice little whoosh. What is really needed is a catalyst of some sort to do the job for you, but I suppose we are into fuel cell territory now, which do tend to waste a lot of heat in the process. Brian

[Jethro_uk]

Did I say otherwise ?

[newshound]

We had a mains-powered device in one of our labs. The handset finished in a short length of capilliary tube which, when ignited, gave an oxy-hydrogen flame about 10mm long with a 1 mm inner cone. Those with the right touch used to make chromel-alumel thermocouple junctions with it. I guess they needed a flux, but I can't recall at this distance of time. It was about the size of a shoebox, I guess it started to feed when the pressure was sufficient to open an internal valve, and maybe it had some sort of internal regulation that varied the gas production rate by controlling how much of the electrodes were submerged. I don't think it had any "electronic" regulation or any clever moving parts inside.

[Tim+]

No, you didn?t. It?s the headline title of the YouTube video that is misleading.

Tim

[Tim+]

Still seem to be around on eBay.

Tim

[Jethro_uk]

You still bother with such things ?

[newshound]

Interesting. I would not have thought it was the obvious device for acrylic welding or flame polishing.

[Animal]

you've really outdone yourself :)

[newshound]

Sorry, just don't see it. You have a tiny and very hot flame from a device ten times the price of a simple plumbers lamp using disposable cylinders. On the web you can see people doing it with various normal sized gas torches.

[newshound]

Please tell me what sort of acrylic object you would flame polish with a flame 10mm long and < 2mm diameter. Jewelery, perhaps. It could actually be quite useful for silver soldering jewelery although AFAIK jewelers mostly use conventional gas torches with a reducing flame.

[newshound]

At one time the cheap disposable cylinders were, actually, cheaper than a 4.5kg refill from Calor.