making an electrolysis with old psu

[David101]

sorry if this doesnt go here...if your reading it and it doesnt belong just delete it or stop reading...this is a curiousity experiment

ok this is the thing. i read (i think it was these forums) abut an electrolysis w/ a un and something. anyways, i fel like making an electrolysis . k, so i know a little about this stuff cause ive been taking apart tvs/motors and all that junk since i was a kid, but i never started learning about this resistance stuff and how all the volts/amps/watts relate to eachother tell like a year ago (gr.9 science..lol)

k...so....i took apart an old comp and i got a psu. (i think its at...not atx...it doesnt have the BIG connector to go to the motherboard and that little one that goes w/ it....so its at im assuming). what i wanna do is use this to power my electrolysis cause i doesnt wanna use 120v/15amps coming directly form socket.

this psu says it has 8(or 5...dunno) amps for 12v rail and .8 for -12. now this is what im wondering:

all i have to do is connect -12 and +12 to electrodes..right?? (i already have 2 hugeass nails conenct to a board in a bucket)

now....to measure these voltages with a multimetre all i have to do is connect positive to +12 volt and neg to ground...then -12 to negative and positive to ground..right?...........or -12 to neg and +12 to positive?what would happen?

now i did this already w/ a 9-volt battery...but not enuf hydrogen

so my question is this

if i put the +12v 8amp linme and -12 volt .8 amp...will that be really dangerous? the old psu at has a switch with a ground wire so i will conenct ground wire to psu box (metal) but i need to know

what makes more hydrogen bubbles..more amps/volts? or watts?

and lastly...what happaned to my oxygen? i thoghut hydrogen collected at negative end and oxygen collected and positive end?

you dont have to answer all my quesions...but i would be really happy if you guys did...im really curious about all this science stuff..since i was a kid

thanks

 

[lexxmac]

What you are trying to do is indeed electrolysis (meaning to loosen by electricity). If you want more bubbles you need to increase the surface area of the metal objects in the water, say by using metal plates. Increasing the amperage or voltage will work also, but what you need to look at is the wattage you are using (amps x volts = watts). Wattage is a better way to measure power. And as for your oxygen, their will be far more oxygen bubbles than hydrogen, and they will collect on the different terminals.

 

[David101]

k thanks for the help im gonna go make one..lol

 

[Peter]

And: You need to use +12 against neutral (ground), not against -12. Seems as if you didn't really listen in grade 9 sci class. Please, for your own safety, go read about electrolysis BEFORE you try.

Oh, and you're going to release hydrogen and oxygen in exactly the perfect ratio to make it go boom at the first spark.

 

[Cogman]

Please improve your grammer, it is very hard to understand what you are trying to say. From what I gathered you want to do and experement in plating metals. Just so you know, you are playing with a lot of electricity and it is potentially dangerous.

The hydrogen should collect at the positive end (if I'm not mistaken) as hydrogen has a charge of -1 it should go to the positive side (oppisites attract, again I'm not sure about this) just so you know it will take a while before you can collect enough hydrogen to make an explosion that is very impressive (all signs point to this as you ultimate goal). gun powder is much more fun to watch exploded, but you might not be old enough to get some.

 

[David101]

thanks for the help guys and sorry about grammar, i usally type fast and dont read over my work lol. sorry

alright so i did the experiment...i put 12v and -12v straight to the electrodes and for some reason i saw some bubbles...maybe it was the old bubbles form the 9v i used previously but i dunno ill try it again.(only did it for 2 secs then i had to go out) anyways, reason why i wanted 12v and -12 is cause i wanted more volts lol...i read u can 7v mod fans and stuff so i assumed that you could apply that here to volt mod to 24v. i didnt learn much on electricity last year lol, i listened though came out with a 96 (easy teacher too).

anyways, ill try tomorrow, and from what i understand now to achieve 12v i need to put 12v wire and neutral(black) on the other one....but since i want more i would have to put 12v/-12v together?

anyways yea eventually i wanna put it in baloons and stuff and watch it burn...lol. problem is i dont have a very good way from getting the hydrogen/oxygen. and i dont wanan manually hold it cause i think ill toush the wires and have 8 amps going through me

thanks for help...ill go do some more research

 

[uart]

And: You need to use +12 against neutral (ground), not against -12. Seems as if you didn't really listen in grade 9 sci class. Please, for your own safety, go read about electrolysis BEFORE you try.

Ok, I'm not up on exactly what voltage is required for electrolysis of H2O. I believe that 12volts is sufficient but please tell us Peter, exactly what does happen if you use 24 Volts instead of 12 ?

 

[Jeff7]

Don't you need specific kinds of metal to serve as the electrodes?

Edit: just did some quick research, appears not. I just remembered once, way back in middle school, the electrolysis thing that the teacher had used a different kind of metal for each electrode, I just don't remember which. Maybe that was for electrolysis in different chemicals, instead of just in water.

 

[Mark R]

The metal of the electrodes doesn't matter that much if you just want little bits of hydrogen - however, many metals will dissolve or corrode greatly. The optimal solution is to use platinum, but a cheaper alternative is graphite rods.

The voltage doesn't matter much as long as it is more than about 1.8V. Higher voltage means more amps. And it is the amps that give you the hydrogen.

So, using a higher voltage gives you hydrogen faster, but you use more energy for the same amount of hydrogen - and that goes into heating the water. Use too high a voltage, with too much current, and you'll boil the water.

Nothing much will happen if you use 24V instead of 12V in a tiny little cell, but on a PC PSU, the -12V is very weak compared to the +12V. The -12V line would probably survive shorting to ground, but shorting it to 12V could very well kill it. Besides, you'd probably want more than 1A to get a decent amount of hydrogen, so no point in limiting yourself to 0.8 A, when you could have 8 A.

 

[David101]

thanks, this explains basically everything i guess ill use yellow/black for 12v/neutral combo.

1 last question....if u put a normal plug in water, then itll short circuit and stuff right?...so why does it not happen here? is it cause too many amps are gonig thru and the fuse box or braker doesnt allow it?

thanks.

 

[uart]

A "normal" AC plug is much higher voltage, typically several hundred volts peak but will vary according to which country you are in. Even so it will not actually "short" in fresh water, though it's not a good idea to mess with it anyway.


Incidently, if my "back of an envelope" calculations are correct then you should be able to produce approx 5.6 cc per minute of Hydrogen (at the -ive electrode) with a 0.8 Amp supply current and approx 56 cc per minute at 8.0 Amps, assuming you can get a large enough electrode area to actually get that current at 12 volts. BTW the Oxygen production at the +ive electrode will be exactly half this amount in each case.

As to whether 24 or 12 volts will produce more gas for you in practice depends on whether you have large enough electrodes to allow more then 0.8 amps to flow at 12 volts.

 

[David101]

thanks for al the help guys, but one last question...lol

i used galvanized nails for electrodes (zinc plated i think) and i think it worked...1 was all dirty other was black

now i used 2 pennies....but its still black...and all the water is black. i thoghut underneath pennies was metallic colour(new ones...2003-im in canada) ?? am i burning the penny with too many amps, or is that a normal process? cause i dont wanna burn anything lol...if its normal just say so and ill be very happy.

thanks.

 

[lexxmac]

In the US, pennies are made of zinc. I setup my old experiment which uses two aluminium heatsinks (from the t-bird days), with 18 guage copper wires forced in between the fins on the sinks. I'm not quite sure why, but Uart's numbers don't seem to be holding true on my setup. I seem to be getting about 56 cc over about 24 hours. I'm going to play with it and see what happens. Oh, the heatsinks really work well, aluminum doesn't seem to corrode much.

 

[uart]

'm not quite sure why, but Uart's numbers don't seem to be holding true on my setup.

What current is it drawing? My figures were just theoretical amounts (under standard atmospheric condidtions) for a given current level. I have no idea what your actual current levels will be, I justed worked out what would be possible with the available 0.8 Amp (or 8.0 amps in the case of the 12V rail).


BTW, if anyone is interested in from where I plucked those figures (now dont say my @rse hehe). It's as follows.

Moles/second = Current / (1.6*10^(-19)) / (6*10^(23)) / 2

cc's / second = Moles/second * 22.4 * 1000

The above is for H2 molecules which require 2 electrons per molucle. Since O2 requires 4 electrons per released molecule then you only get half as much so divide the above by 2.

 

[lexxmac]

I was drawing just below that, 12v at 7.5 amps.