Friday, March 29, 2013

How to Generate Pure Oxygen and Hydrogen at Home

We all know the potentials of these two gases and how important they are on this planet. Oxygen is the life sustaining gas without which no living creature on this planet can live, hydrogen on other hand has its own merits and can be considered as the future fuel which would ultimately power our vehicles and cook our foods once all the naturally available fossil resources goes out of stock and gets depleted.


In school days we all have learned and witnessed the process called the electrolysis of water, where water which is made up of two main constituents H2O (two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen) is broken down forcibly with the help of electric current.
However in this process, normally a pinch of salt is added or sometime a drop of sulfuric acid is added for enhancing the electrolysis process.
This results in speedy electrolysis process, and we are able to see large and thick amounts of gas bubbles come out across the two electrodes which are connected to a potential difference source or simply to a battery.
However theres an misconception that the above process generates oxygen and hydrogen with ease, in fact that may not be the case and if carefully assess the process yo will find its not the water but the added chemical which is getting broken in the influence of the electric current.
That means if we add salt to water, the electrolysis process will generate the gas chlorine and sodium deposits over the two electrodes and not oxygen or hydrogen.....you can expect the generation of H and O, but in very negligible volumes.
For generating pure oxygen and hydrogen through the process of breaking down water components we need to implement the process of electrolysis without the addition of any foreign chemical into water.
In simple words the procedure must be carried out breaking H2O directly without the help of any catalyst medium.
However if you try to do this, you will find the process to be very lethargic and absolutely impossible, because the bond between the H2O components are so great, it might become impossible to disintegrate them into parts.
But it can be done through brute force, means instead of using low power DC, if we use mains AC, and introduce it into a container filled with water, we might just be able to force the liquid to separate into its pure forms.
THIS METHOD HAS BEEN DISCOVERED BY ME, I ASSUME SO, BECAUSE ITS NOT BEEN DISCUSSED ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE NET SO FAR.

OK, the method is as simple as it can be, while experimenting I found that by converting mains AC to DC, the process aggravates more rapidly and thick fogs of gases can be seen across the  respective electrodes.
And it is definitely important to use DC. otherwise the gases will alternately produced over the two electrodes haphazardly completely ruining the results.

So....its all about making a bridge rectifier circuit using four diodes, 1n4007 will do. take four of them and construct the bridge rectifier module and next wire up the system as per the shown diagram.
The glass apparatus will need to be carefully set. As can be see in the figure, the two glass tubes are inverted inside a container filled with water.
The two tubes should be filled with the water such that both the tubes share the container water among themselves.
A couple of copper electrodes are fitted in such a way that they get inside the tubes water content just as shown in the figure.
The electrodes are terminated out through respective wires connections which are further connected to the bridge rectifiers positive and negative outputs.
The bridge rectifier inputs are in turn connected to mains AC.
The moment power is switched ON, thick surfs of  bubbles can be seen coming out from the electrodes and exploding into the respective gas forms into the vacant area of the tubes.
Since theres no external chemical involved here, we can assume the gas formed and collected inside the tubes to be pure oxygen and hydrogen.
As the process is allowed to continue, you will find the water level coming down and getting transformed into oxygen and hydrogen within the two tubes.
The tubes should have a valve type arrangement at their top termination, so that the accumulated gas can be either transferred to a larger container or directly accessed from the nozzles by releasing the taps or the valve mechanism.
THE WHOLE SYSTEM INVOLVES HIGH AC AND DC POTENTIALS, DEATH CAN COME WITHIN MINUTES IF ANY OF THE PART OF THE SYSTEM IS TOUCHED, EVEN THE WATER IS HIGHLY DANGEROUS TO TOUCH IN SWITCHED ON POSITION. DO NOT SHORT CIRCUIT THE ELECTRODES, WHICH MAY RESULT IN FIRE AND HUGE EXPLOSIONS. GREAT CAUTION MUST EXERCISED WHILE HANDLING THIS SET UP.




How to construct the bridge rectifier and wire it for the above apparatus:




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