Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Sweet sassy molassy, you've got some guff kiddo!
Claiming that redox reactions of water is the equivalent of finding harvestable hydrogen is like claiming that running current through a light bulb is like making tiny stars. Just because some guy on youtube says that he is extracting 'hydrogen fuel' from water does not mean that the solution to all of our dependencies (read: oil, what the duder was so surreptitiously getting at) will vanish.
What you consider to be a 'hydrogen engine' is not a literal hydrogen engine. It uses the very minute combustion power of H2 reacting with atmosphere at an accelerated rate to help the engine perform a tiny bit more efficiently than it normally would, at the cost of electrical input. What we consider hybrid cars nowadays are not driven by hydrogen combustion, but electrical batteries that are very weak, but ecologically safe.
RAWR im done with this now.
Zurreco, all good and reasonable points. All that is left is to answer this one question and this topic will never need discussing again:
Is it impossible to split H2O?
Edit: Heh I just found the first page of this thread. Good stuff :)
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
No, not impossible. However, it is very very costly to do so right now, and this whole battery operation is a very very insanely tiny step in that direction.
If we could get two mountains, one of copper and one of zinc, and run a saline river between them, then connect two wires from both mountains in to a freshwater, filtered ocean... you might be able to run a moped for a few feet.
Right, so all the hydrogen test cars that have been running around California (where you live) are powered by an ocean of water... we just never noticed was missing.
Not to mention Honda was ready to launch thier line of hydrogen cars in 2004, and didn't only because of poor market perception on hydrogen.
dont worry, your only trying to disprove science (hydrogen extraction via electrolysis) that's been around since 1840. We dont expect you to catch up that quickly.
Don't be impressed so easily, xoinx, most people only think they know everything about everything :P .
Regardless of whatever semantics Zurreco thinks can save his argument, he is more or less wrong on every count. Electrolysis is, in fact, the correct word, kileran used it correctly, it does, in fact, split water molecules, and it doesn't require much energy at all. (It can be done with household batteries.) Also, oxygen gas and hydrogen gas will not spontaneously recombine into water at STP, and it requires no energy to "keep them from re-interacting with eachother." It actually requires energy to get them to recombine. Hydrogen is very flammable, but you still have to light a match.
Also, acids and bases don't split water. In pure water a very small number of water molecules will naturally dissociate into OH and H30 because it is self-ionizing, and the concentration of dissociated ions is how water's neutral pH of 7 is determined. Acids and bases change the OH and H30 concentrations in water, because acids and bases themselves dissociate in a solution with water, as well. There is a series of reactions using sulphuric acid and elemental iodine where water is used as a reactant which produces oxygen and hydrogen, but the water doesn't split, the sulphuric acid does.
Let me know if there's anything else I can clear up.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
xebra wrote:
Hydrogen is very flammable, but you still have to light a match.
Also, acids and bases don't split water.
You forget that a simple pen light contains enough energy to explode a balloon. I wasn't expecting him to seriously think that hydrogen gas would blow up in the atmosphere. Man, do I seriously have to start explaining when I'm joking and when I'm not?
Also, acids and bases, by their nature, dissociate in solution when mixed.
I get what you mean Zurreco. Pure water is a bad electrolyte to obtain hydrogen from... but what if there are some ionic salts dissolved in it, or maybe hydrolysis of acids to make the water ionize further so that it can be 'split' more easily...
Here's another video on youtube that sort of reiterates my point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhm0ozrpHJ8&NR
EDIT: I realised this thread is updating even faster than I can read or reply lol. Just saw xebra's post, I get the idea...
nobody's disputing that Xoinx, salt certainly does aid the process, especially in a low voltage situation. With 1.2 and even 1.5 volts, i coulnd't get reaction without salt.
at 9V, it does it all on it's own though, quite quickly, given the battery was almost dead.
Edit in reply to Xoinx's edit... "Yup, that's the whole of it"
It's always difficult to take anyone seriously that says plainly incorrect things in an arrogant and serious tone and then claims to have been "just kidding!" when their errors are pointed out to them. Also, you seem to have taken to repeating me in an attempt to prove me wrong, Zurreco:
xebra wrote:
... acids and bases themselves dissociate in a solution with water, as well.
Zurreco wrote:
Also, acids and bases, by their nature, dissociate in solution when mixed.
on a finishing note, i did run a little 9V test of my own. Probably made about 1oz of hydrogen before i noticed that the wires were electroplating, and leaving an ugly black mark on the bottom of one of my wife's bowls.
It all cleaned up nice, which means i'm not in the dog house :) but i had to stop the test before i got enough H to burn it off.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
hey, kileran... now that you've discovered electrolysis, you should advance a level and try to build an electric engine! That's really really cool!
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Bisqwit wrote:
Why do you think we don't have hydrogen engines yet?
In truth, the reason we don't have them yet is that every single oil-producing company would be against that, and the oil market is something that feeds a lot of pockets (and is also being the main economic basis for some countries). There's a lot more instances when companies hinder an obviously progressive development to be able to milk the consumers as longer as possible (that is another topic, though).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 4/30/2006
Posts: 480
Location: the secret cow level
I recently saw a show on alternative energy on PBS... Iceland has a surplus of electrical energy, due to the abundance of geothermal vents, so they've started installing electrolysis devices onsite at gas stations. Since the infrastructures for delivering electricity and water already exist, they're almost completely eliminating the transportation costs from the fuel.
Wish I had noticed this thread sooner. We did pretty much exactly this experiment in high school Chemistry class in 1999.
My Chemistry teacher took the socket out of a lamp and had two prongs extending from the bottom of the light bulb. He would plug it in and lower the prongs into a beaker of water, and bubbles would form around the prongs. Bend the prongs upward and you could place a bottle above them to collect the hydrogen.
This was a slow way to get hydrogen, so the rest of the class used hydrochloric acid and metal. I don't remember which metal we used, but I tried it at home by crumpling up aluminum foil and dropping it in "muriatic acid", a strong hydrochloric acid that you can buy at most hardware stores. Bad idea! HCl + Al = H + AlCl. The aluminum burns up instantly and releases aluminum chloride which, aside from smelling awful, is probably really bad for you.
Anyway, in school we collected hydrogen in clear bottles and then lit a match, and put the match into the bottle. The hydrogen would explode in a satisfying pop, heat and flames would leap out of the bottle and almost burn you, and the match would eventually start burning again! Hydrogen burns with an invisible flame (unlike the Hindenburg), but the flame becomes visible again once the hydrogen is used up. The point is that it takes energy, in the form of a match, to cause the hydrogen and oxygen to recombine.
My teacher, on the other hand, filled a giant cast iron cylinder with hydrogen to show us how powerful the explosion could get. A rubber stopper (basically a bath tub plug) sealed the cylinder at the top, and was attached to the cylinder with a thin chain. When the cylinder was full, the teacher touched a metal square on the cylinder with an electrode and created a deafening explosion. The rubber stopper was blown out of the cylinder and broke the chain, smashed into the ceiling and left a black mark on the ceiling (skid mark!). It just missed the flourescent light bulbs.
If you care to do it, you can make a pretty big bang with the hydrogen you can collect from water, but it takes a heck a lot of power to move a car. Lots of fun, though.
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