After being exposed to the process of making Hydrogen and then using it as a fuel I had to see for myself just how easy it is. For many of you Chemists you probably already know about electrolysis. For those not familiar with the term it simply means separating compounds using electricity.

First I gathered a few items from radio shack and from around the house.

• Glass of water from the tap
• Wire from radio shack
• a 9-Volt battery
• 9-Volt battery terminal to make it easy (radio shack)
• Alligator Clips to make it easier
• A straw
• some tape (every guy needs some tape)
• Paper Clips (my electrodes)

That is it, with some chemistry, physics, and some stuff around the house the experiment will begins.

First prepare the wires. Strip about a ½ inch on each end so that the wire is exposed. On one end connect the Alligator Clips and on the other attach the battery terminal.

Next straighten the paper clips, then wrapped them around a pencil so that they were coiled. No real reason for the coil except for the fact that I thought I would be able to see the process a little better.

Poke holes in the straw and inserted the coiled paper clips. Make sure that the coils are as deep into the water as possible for best effect.

Next, attach the Alligator clips to the coils. I needed a little tape because the wire was not cooperating and kept wanting to lift the coils out of the water.

Now it was go time. I connected the battery and…tiny bubbles (come on you can sing it like Don Ho). The tiny bubbles were hydrogen, or probably more accurately hydroxy. It was a slow reaction at first, but began to speed up and it got better with just a little bit of time. There were not many bubbles on the positive side. Most came from the negative terminal. The positive side would be Oxygen.

But like all great experimenters I could not just finish here. I had to try to see just how much hydrogen I could make. So I added a little NaCl (sodium chloride), or simple table salt.

What a difference. It instantly bubbled rapidly and I soon had a hydroxy cloud forming on the top of the glass. I believe if I left it go long enough, and my coils were of good enough metal quality I could have filled up the entire glass with the hydroxy bubbles.

After about 1 minute I noticed a yellow tint to the water. After another minute it started to turn the whole glass of water yellow. I also noticed that the positive coil was turning black. Very interesting (make this comment with a foreign accent).

The reason for the coil to turn black is that it was oxidizing, or as some of us know it as tarnish. The quality of the paper clips is certainly cheep, and probably made of a mixture of metals including aluminum. Aluminum can also be used to separate water into Hydrogen and Oxygen in a chemical process.

I have seen other experiments where the water turns yellow but only after a long time of use, not as quickly as it did for us.

The reason for the table salt is quite simple. In reality water is a poor conductor of electricity. We all know not to get in the bathtub with a toaster, but it is not nearly as good as we have been lead to believe. By adding NaCl the salt water solution becomes a much better conductor of electricity, which leads to more bubbles.

It was completely surprising to me how easy it was to do. I guess I have always thought that making hydrogen was some huge involved process. Now I feel like I have more questions that need to be answered.

What makes more hydrogen surface area of the metal, or more volts, or more amps? Does the amount of water used make any difference? What has better potential to run an engine pure hydrogen or the hydrogen oxygen mix that I was generating? How difficult is it to trap hydrogen and oxygen separately inside a system such as a car or a boat? Why are we not looking into this further as a nation? Why are scientists so dead set against it not being viable enough in a closed system (back to the car or boat thing)?

Stay tuned the answers are certainly forth coming!

Tags: Green //