Power Source

[septimusseverus]

Hello everyone, I'm new here and would appreciate some help. I came across science forums on Google, and it looked like a place that could help me.

 

I'm in a dilemma. Right now, I am 56 years old and my kids are out of the house. Finally some freedom! To get to the point, I was interested in doing a little work with oxy-hydrogen gas.

 

I understand how it all works. Electrolysis of water yields oxygen and hydrogen, the hydrogen is oxidized by the oxygen producing heat. I also understand that it is not very efficient, but it still interests me.

 

Here's the problem

 

I need to build a power source for this, and frankly, I don't know where to start. I guess that I could use a wall outlet:confused:but certainly not just sticking a cut off plug into the wall socket and touching the wires to the electrodes.

 

So really I am open to any sort of solution, any ideas anyone might have. I just need a relatively high amp power source that is relatively safe.

 

If you don't have any solutions, could you give me some terms or things I should research? I really just don't know what to do....

 

Thanks

[Klaynos]

You don't really have many options, do you know the current etc you need? The easiest thing might be to try a little wind turbine or even solar panels (but that will be expensive), I'm guessing you're a practically minded guy (you should talk to YT2095), so building a little wind turbine then batteries if you need a more relyable source...

Edited June 26, 2008 by Klaynos

[YT2095]

High Amperage isn`t at all dangerous as long as it doesn`t all pass through you, and the way around that is to use a lower voltage.

by doing such it`ll never overcome the skin resistance enough to pass significant current through.

 

 

as for sources of High Amps low voltage, other than the obvious car batteries, have you considered using an old stick welding transformer?

they go WAY UP in amps at a voltage (often adjustable) that`s not particularly dangerous.

 

you Will need a good bank of rectifiers for this however as AC isn`t good for efficient electrolysis.

[Mr Skeptic]

A car charger/starter will convert AC from the wall socket into ~12V DC.

[septimusseverus]

Thanks for responding, those are good ideas....

 

The car charger may be a good idea for my purposes, this is actually the kind of thing that I was invisioning. I think it would have been better to say that I wanted to convert the power from an existing source rather than invent a new one.

 

This may sound naive, but is there a way that I could just take several 12 volt batteries and convert them to give less volts but more amps? I really don't know what I'm talking about, but what I am really aiming for is transforming a power source into something more suited to my needs.

 

Thanks again for responding. This place is brilliant.

[Mr Skeptic]

A 12 volt battery consists of several 1.5 volt cells arranged in series. If you connect them in parallel instead, you will get less voltage but more amperes.

[septimusseverus]

That is more along the lines of what I was thinking....

 

A little while ago while I was unsuccessfuly attempting to research this issue, I came across a video where this man had taken a wall transformer apart. Inside, there was a little device that would normally take the current from the wall and scale it down (anyone know what I'm talking about? it either braught down the volts or amps or both) for use in a smaller electronic.

 

 

What he did was take a 9 volt battery and swiched the current around so that when he was passing the current from the 9 volt backwards through this transformer thing, he was actually intensifying the current. I'm not sure if those things deal with volts or amps or both. Can anyone shed some light on this?

[YT2095]

what sort of gas volume per minute are you aiming for?

if it`s for a burner of some sort, it`s unlikely a Car Batt charger is up to it unless you want a really small flame.

your electrolysis cell will need to have a large surface area to generate plenty of gas, but with a large surface area the more current you`ll need to drive it.

 

just an example: it takes 26.8 Ah to get 1 mole of electrons, that`s 1 amp over 26.8 hours OR 26.8 amps over 1 hour.

now 1 mole of any gas at SRTP is about 22 litres, but Hydrogen likes to be a Molecule (H2) so you`ll need Double that amount of electrons (2 moles), so that`s 53.6 Amps over 1 hour to give about 22 litres of gas!

and lets face it, 22l over 1 hour isn`t much (6ml a second), and there`s Not too many car batt chargers up to delivering 53.6A on a constant load.

Edited June 27, 2008 by YT2095

[septimusseverus]

I actually really haven't decided on that yet, since I have some time on my hands I was just going to see if I could even do it first and then I was actually thinking of attempting to make a blowtorch out of it, although, that would require lots of gas to continually support, and I'm not sure that I could do it. I have seen many videos on such sites as Youtube on the subject of HHO torches, but they all make it look so easy! I just wonder

 

For the large surface area, I was thinking of using stainless steel pot scrubbers. they have unbelievable amounts of surface area.

 

 

 

That is actually where I got the idea, but it always seems eaiser than it turns out.

 

I wonder especially what the power source for the second video was, it didn't show it.

[YT2095]

I just got off the phone to a friend of mine and amongst other things we discussed your question, and after a few calculations between us, it Should be possible using a heavy duty battery charger (something that will deliver 10A constantly without issue), and making 12 individual electrolysis cells (a volt each) in series, to get roughly 5ml of H2 and 2.5ml of O2 per second.

that would be a workable amount for a small torch

[septimusseverus]

Thanks so much for all of your help. Science Forums is amazing!