ElPerfecto.com » hydrogen

Bubble Thing – HHO Fuel Cell Explosion Remix

Earl — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 23:19:17 +0000

The original video shows a group of experimenters from Canada that are making Hydrogen in the form of HHO using electrolysis. Something goes terribly wrong.

I found it humorous and couldn’t resist trying to make a remix of it. I wish I could have been in the room when it happened. I also like to experiment with Hydrogen, so I admire this group for trying something new. They also have other successful experiments.

Here’s the remix:

And here is the original video:

To give the experimenters credit, they did come up with some corrective actions to prevent future disasters. Luckily, all is well and they learned a lesson from the experiment.

They said that this fuel cell ran well at 12V, but then exploded when they increased the voltage to 150V. The wires couldn’t take the extra current, got red hot, and ignited the Hydrogen gas.

Corrective Actions

Use a larger gauge cable, to allow for larger Amp draws without getting hot.

Fill the cell to the top with salt water to lower the amount of combustible gas present in the fuel cell.

Install a pressure release valve.

Perform future testing with an open top fuel cell so that the combustible HHO gas will dilute into air. This would be best done outdoors, too, to prevent an explosion inside your house.

See more of the HHO videos on RonL2524’s Youtube channel.

Solar Light Maintenance; Powers Hydrolysis, too

Earl — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:39:59 +0000

The solar lights on my property have been dim or have been completely off at night. Maintenance can be done on these lamps to get them working again.

Hampton Bay Solar Light Reviews

The solar lanterns are made by Hampton Bay. I see online there are many negative reviews for these lights. Some of the complaints I also have:

LED is too dim
LED won’t turn on
Not enough illumination
Battery contacts corrode
Solar panels darken and become cloudy over time
Batteries included don’t last long (I replaced mine with batteries having more mA hours)

Here are some excerpts from other reviews on the web:

“I will never by anything with the Hampton Bay name again.” complaintsboard.com

“Very dim, barely lights. Hard to see at night. Purchased at Home Depot…” complaintsboard.com

“Most lights quit between 10-18 months so if your looking for long term lighting solution, plan on continually buying replacements…” homedepot.com

“I always get battery contact failure and end up soldering my batteries in.” thestuccocompany.com

“I purchased a hampton bay solar walk light several weeks ago and it just stopped working.” askmehelpdesk.com

Cleaning the Panels

The solar panels become cloudy and weathered in the sun. The panels can be cleaned with rubbing alcohol.

The photoresistor works better if it is clean, so that the circuit knows when the sun is up. There is no need for the light to be on during the day. A clean photoresistor makes sure the LED is off during the day, saving the battery power until it is needed at dark.

VIDEO: How to Fix Solar Lights

A few things that can be done to improve the solar light:

Clean solar panel with rubbing alcohol
Clean battery terminals
Press on capacitors
Replace batteries

If your rechargeable batteries are old or not holding a charge, you should change them with new rechargeable batteries. Want to squeeze some extra life out of those old batteries? You might try surging the old batteries.

Hydrolysis

To measure the power output of the small solar panel built onto these lights, I used hydrolysis. I had a few questions:

How much power in Watts do these panels produce?

Answer: 84 mW in winter

Can low power be used in hydrolysis? How many volts and amps does hydrolysis require?

As shown in the video above, hydrolysis can be achieved with low power. With only 3.8V and 22 mA, we are splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen! It doesn’t take much power to make hydrogen. Looks like anyone can make hydrogen fairly easily.

Make Your Own Air Battery

Earl — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:14:44 +0000

Make Your Own Air Battery

The video below shows three different electrolytes for a cell. Which electrolyte will be the best, producing the most voltage and current?

To make your own cell as in the video, get a couple scrap pieces of metal like Copper and Zinc. The Zinc can be in the form of Zinc-plated steel.

Dunk both metals into a conductive liquid. This experiment will test three liquids.

1. plain tap water

2. water with Sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda, which is a salt

3. water with Sodium Chloride, known as “table salt”

Which one will produce the most power? Which one will produce the highest voltage and current? See the video below to find out…

Spoiler alert: answer is below.

Sodium bicarbonate dissolved in water produced the most voltage, current, and power.

tap water alone produced 0.62 V, 0.27 mA

water with sodium chloride produced 0.70 V, 0.50 mA

water with sodium bicarbonate produced 0.71 V, 1.45 mA

Tomato Battery

Earl — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:57:27 +0000

Edited Jun-10-2010

Acid can release electricity from metal. What is an easy-to-find source of acid? Tomatoes!

VIDEO

The video above shows how an LED and a buzzer are powered by a tomato battery. It’s just two different metals dipped into mashed tomatoes. It even helps charge a AAA battery.

How does this work?

It’s a chemical reaction. Take any two different metals, separate them with a liquid that conducts electricity, and you have a battery. Details are included below.

What kind of tomato is best?

Well, green tomatoes are more acidic then red, ripe ones. So, no need to waste a good eating tomato. If you grow your own tomatoes, you could pick one early, while still green, and use the acid from that in the battery.

Update on Tomato Battery – 4 Days Later

The video below shows how the Zinc plating was stripped off the metal by the tomato acids. Also shown is how the LED still lights up, although with less intensity, four days after the tomato battery was constructed.

Video above shows how the AAA battery was charged from the tomato battery. The AAA battery went up from 1318mV to 1330mV. While not much, it shows that this small scale experiment could have a practical use. The energy transferred from the tomato battery to the AAA battery could be used in any application that uses AAA batteries, like wireless headphones or an LED flashlight.

Is the AAA battery being overcharged?

The battery label says it is 1.2V. If the tomato battery is charging it up to 1.33V, is that overcharging it? My short answer is “no”. See the video below for an explanation.

About a week after the tomato battery was constructed, mold was growing on the tomato mix and power production dropped to nearly nothing so I disbanded this experiment and cleaned up my mess.

What kind of acid is in tomatoes?

Tomatoes have a pH of about 4.1. The lower the pH, the stronger the acid. To give some perspective, here are the pH values of some other acids.

0.0 Hydrochloric acid

1.0 Gastric acid (in your tummy)

2.2 lemon juice

2.4 vinegar

4.1 tomatoes

5.8 potatoes source

6.0 urine (Yeah, your urine can be acidic and would work as a weak battery electrolyte! It is usually more acidic when you first wake up in the morning and turns more alkaline as the day progresses. The more meat you eat, the more acidic your urine will be. Vegetarians can have alkaline urine.)

7.0 water (considered to be neutral and not an acid)

From my reading, it appears there are many kinds of acid present in tomatoes:

ascorbic acid
chlorogenic acid source
folic acid source
p-coumaric acid
chlorogenic acid source
salicylic acid source
malic acid source
caffeic acid source

What is the chemical reaction in the tomato battery?

In the video above, the tomato battery is initially made with:

Zinc
Copper
acid

The Zinc is the negative terminal, the anode. The tomato’s acid liberates electrons from the Zinc.

Zn(s) –> Zn²⁺(aq) + 2 e-

Solid Zinc releases a couple electrons, changing into Zinc ions, which allows it to dissolve into the electrolyte (the water / tomato acid mixture).

Copper is the positive terminal, the cathode. The Copper atoms attract electrons more than do the Zinc (Zn) atoms. The electrons that came off the Zinc get sucked into the Copper terminal.

How does the acid help?

An acid’s active ingredient is positively-charged Hydrogen. The acid releases Hydrogen ions (H+) that are reduced to Hydrogen gas (H2), which bubbles around the electrodes. When I was recording the video above, I did witness bubbles forming around the Zinc plates. As more bubbles coated the Zinc plates, the battery made less power. This is because the Hydrogen bubbles prevented the electrolyte from making contact with the metal. When I lifted the plates out of the electrolyte, the bubbles vanished into thin air, literally! After returning the plates into the electrolyte, without the Hydrogen bubbles covering the Zinc, the battery gave more power.

By the way, if you could capture this Hydrogen gas, you could generate power from it, too! Just make a Hydrogen fuel cell and you would get two power sources here. But back to the battery…

As the current flows, more Zinc ions are dissolved into the tomato electrolyte. The Zinc is gradually being eaten away.

What is the chemical reaction when salt is added to the electrolyte?

A tomato is actually not necessary, nor is any acid. Any pair of metals separated by any liquid that conducts electricity will behave as a battery. The liquid cannot be pure water and the metals must be different.

Most combinations of metals and liquids do not produce enough electrical power to be practical. The chemical reactions are usually not strong and soon stop producing an electric current.

The first battery was invented in 1800. In early batteries, someone often had to scrub the metal plates to remove hydrogen bubbles, oxides, and other foreign material to keep the batteries working. You could still use a battery like this if you didn’t mind the maintenance.

Salt water can be the battery’s electrolyte. This is called an “air battery”. However, using an acid generates more power, a higher voltage, and higher current, because it liberates the electrons from both the anode and the cathode. This means the metals, in this case Copper and Zinc, both get consumed. In an air battery (or salt water battery), only one of the metals is consumed, resulting in less power generated but also with less materials consumed.

In the acid battery, the acid and both metals are used up. In the salt water battery, only one of the metals is used up – the other metal and the salt is never consumed.