Hydrogen Generator

[insta]

nice!! now if you could safely compress it and store it......

You can burn it in the presence of oxygen, and it will oxidize into a stable non-toxic compound that is liquid at room temperature. You should be able to store that indefinitely.

And you can use the heat from that reaction to power steam turbines to produce more hydrogen! Then seal it in a large glass chamber, discard thermodynamics, and have a kickass MakerFaire project

[Matt_Sharkey]

nice!! now if you could safely compress it and store it......

You can burn it in the presence of oxygen, and it will oxidize into a stable non-toxic compound that is liquid at room temperature. You should be able to store that indefinitely.

non-toxic is a little misleading. there are thousands of deaths documented annually caused by this liquid by-product. I think it should be handled with a little more respect.

[pyronaught]

Indeed, a rapid influx of dihydrogenmonoxide killed thousands of people in Thialand a few years back. Atlantis never recovered from their episode with it.

[pyronaught]

nice!! now if you could safely compress it and store it......

You can burn it in the presence of oxygen, and it will oxidize into a stable non-toxic compound that is liquid at room temperature. You should be able to store that indefinitely.

And you can use the heat from that reaction to power steam turbines to produce more hydrogen! Then seal it in a large glass chamber, discard thermodynamics, and have a kickass MakerFaire project

It is also important to call it "Free Energy" when under the delusion that you are breaking the laws of thermodynamics, then claim that Big Oil has been suppressing this secret design for years.

[pyronaught]

Six months after starting this project I finally get around to assembling that huge stack of printed electrolysis frames. It will still be a few more days before I find out if I made a usable hydrogen generator or a $400 door stop. It took three solid days to make all the screens, clean the plates and assemble that thing!

[Slipshine]

Wishing you the best.

[Jules]

Be sure to tell us how it worked out. (Or shoot a vid!)

[pyronaught]

It worked!

Still some leaks to fix, but I got tired of waiting and fired it up. Hydrogen purity is 96%, so I'm within my 5% oxygen contamination limit. Oxygen reading was settling around 4%. I haven't measured rate of production yet, since that is a variable that can be dialed in. Heat dissipation is the next issue to deal with, as the water running through the cell reached temps of 130F after only about 15 minutes of running it. I just ordered a stainless/copper heat exchanger off ebay to deal with that problem. The great news is that the cell itself is a successful design and a viable method of producing hydrogen for RC blimp use. The 3D printed method is superior to the rubber gasket method, not only because it just works better due to being able to design optimized flow ducts but you also have the ability to stop leaks by just slathering the whole thing with however many layers of sealant it takes. I've been using ABS cement as the sealer on the outside, which works great because it is so easy to apply, dries fast and you get a nice smooth, plastic-like coating on the outside.

https://youtu.be/3LhsmgJKQk0

[Jules]

non-toxic is a little misleading. there are thousands of deaths documented annually caused by this liquid by-product. I think it should be handled with a little more respect.

Indeed, a rapid influx of dihydrogenmonoxide killed thousands of people in Thailand a few years back. Atlantis never recovered from their episode with it.

Don't know how I missed this little gem of an exchange...........

It worked!

Congrats! How long til you have enough to send her up? (Video of maiden voyage desired.)

[pyronaught]

It will be a while yet before I can fill a blimp. While the hydrogen cell itself is done, there's a whole support system around it which must be cleaned up and rebuilt into a portable unit. The main bit of engineering left on that is the cooling system for the electrolyte, since this thing needs to be able to run for long periods at a time such as 15 hours or more. Without a cooling system it will overheat itself inside of 30 minutes.

But I did get it done just in time to make oxy-hydrogen backyard boomers for the 4th. One gallon milk jugs make quite a bang, and all you need is one of those push button gas grill ignitors to set them off. It will fill jugs so fast that the cooling system is not required for that.