alright guys I have a challenge it casts challenges we love challenges the
hydrogen economy is ramping up and I think that we should make some hydrogen
in the shop you want to have a way to have hydrogen here anytime you need yeah
absolutely I think we could probably do that yeah I remember high school science
you use electrolysis I like DC power separates hydrogen water into hydrogen
and oxygen and you can collect the gas with a balloon off a hose at the top of
the thing how difficult could it be it's the most abundant element in the
universe indeed all right so here's what I want 15 liters of hydrogen by the end
of the day good luck
okay norm I went shopping and we got a ton of stuff most of this came from Home
Depot but they're a couple of specialized parts okay we're gonna build
a hydrolysis rig and electrolysis for water rig using plans originally posted
on YouTube by the king of random we're gonna modify his rig a little bit though
his spits out he separates the hydrogen and oxygen releases them both as a gas
together out the same vent we're gonna do two separate poles and anode and a
cathode oxygen will come off one hydrogen will come off the other because
that means we can collect the hydrogen gas separately and I think we should
have a pretty good result out of that so we gotta make the anode and the cathode
you got stainless steel for that big sheet of stainless steel 20 gauge I've
got a whole bunch of acrylic tube I've got a variety of weird plumbing fittings
let's get building
okay docking shin twist twist I suppose there we go that was perfect
plumbers this one insert your tubes yep yep that's good okay good a little bit
okay so we've got a bunch of hauls a bunch of different sizes what these are
gonna do is give us a lot of surface area for the anodes and the cathode so
the more surface area we have the more hydrogen more oxygen or produce and
sticking to the sides of these on one side oxygen one side hydrogen on one
side oxygen one side hydrogen and then but before we do that I'm gonna sand
them up a little bit first just to give them a little bit more surface area all
right it's in the belt sander assembly norm so the way it's gonna work is that
the brackets are gonna fit up inside the head bolts are gonna go up we're going
to connect our electrodes to them to generate the hydrogen and oxygen and
then we're gonna actually run these plates through a couple of bolts and
dangle them down into the water so what we're going to do it we made some thin
plates that are an inch and a half to made some thick slates that are three
inches we're gonna do a couple of thin plates
four thick plates and a couple more thin plates so we fill up as much space as we
can in the circular tube more surface area put the brackets on either side
space them out with washers is this any too tall I know
we measured okay all right this looks pretty good
I'm pleased without it turned out we got a lot of surface area when we put some
hooks and juice up to one end huh get up the other end hopefully hydrogen oxygen
to come out which one's the anode whichever one we want
yours is the anode whichever one has the best marks okay I know all right let's
fit them in okay let's see this is a test fitting
insert your towers yeah sure that on YouTube that's not bad I almost think we
knew what we were doing this is the rig we got a lot of surface here we can
generate a lot of hydrogen a lot of oxygen but before we get to that we got
to build a stand all right let's do it
all right that's it electrolysis rings built we got to stand we're gonna tie it
down we're gonna carry it outside we got some special surprises and let's go test
it yeah let's see how it works
okay no one we're back we're outside we have our electrolysis ring set up it's
full of water we're running current through it what's happening inside the
tubes well this is a basic science experiment we're taking water h2o and
splitting it into its two component molecules hydrogen and oxygen now to do
that all you had to do is one current through DC current is the current
through it and where does that current come from well you could plug this into
a power supply into your car battery but we wanted clean energy and what cleaner
energy is there then the Sun yeah so we got a commercially available solar panel
it's the kind of you might put on the roof of your recreational vehicle to
power small electronics during the day and it produces about 22 volts of power
about a hundred watts of energy and we're running that through the through
the tubes right now to split hydrogen and oxygen at the anode and cathode
respectively right and with this type of hydrogen converter and generator the
more voltage you run through the more hydrogen the faster that process happens
exactly so we could have used it and say a 12-volt car battery that's the
traditional way you do this in high school science experiments but we're
gonna produce a lot more energy because the panel is actually producing 22 volts
of rather than 12 volts now the other important ingredient is water and this
isn't just normal tap water no normal tap water has a ton of impurities salts
calcium carbonate stuff like that and the side effect of running normal tap
water and electrolysis rig is that you can produce unpleasant things that you
don't want to breathe like chlorine gas it's very dangerous and very corrosive
so we use distilled water but distilled water is not particularly conductive on
its own so we have to add our own electrolyte in this case potassium
hydroxide so that the electricity can go in one side move through the water come
out the other side and split the hydrogen and oxygen from the water in
the process now a note on potassium hydroxide it's extremely caustic and
dangerous stuff yeah you gotta be careful if we're gonna try to recreate
this experiment yeah don't I mean don't let it touch your skin wear gloves wear
goggles wear a face shield if you have it
if you happen to get any on your skin it's important to have some sort of mild
acid around so we have a big jar of acetic acid ik acid which is just
vinegar if we had any spills or any accidents we could pour on two helpfully
stop the burn before it happens look at the machine I think it's working
you have oxygen coming out being released harmlessly into the atmosphere
and then the hydrogen bubbles being funneled into this giant cleared garbage
bag and over time we gather a bunch of hydrogen
alright guys the rake looks great how does it do well you asked for 15 liters
the hydrogen I think we got about 15 milliliters that's I'm no mathematician
but that's off by a couple zeros it's only two orders a night but you didn't
actually make hydrogen what's coming out of this one oxygen yeah all right oxygen
over here hydrogen over there now the upshot from this is this is not the most
efficient process I can clearly case you couldn't tell we use clean energy to
produce the hydrogen which was a good step in the right direction but there's
much more efficient industrial processes that you can use to make convert
commercial hydrogen at scale for things like hydrogen powered cars and hydrogen
powered tools and all the stuff that we're excited about so the better way to
get hydrogen than making an electrolysis rig in your garage probably go down to
your local gas supplier and buy a big tank vise okay all right and then we'll
start working on converting my shop to hydrogen power well that's phase two