Producing Hydrogen Gas

Hi NSS,

Your production method is going to suffer from the very low temperature as with every 10K change the rate either is halved or doubled. You can also produce hydrogen by reacting NaOH with Al metal. It was a popular way of producing the gas from scrap in the 1950s and being highly exothermic helped accelerate things once started.

Good luck,

Massey.

Hi NSS,

NaOH is highly hygroscopic some would say virtually deliquescent, having great solubility in water,and therefore it is an efficient anti-freeze in its own right. If you look at the position of Al in the Periodic table you will see that it is quite high and therefore can also be classed as highly reactive. It certainly is with respect to NaOH solution and the exothermic reaction generates enough heat to accelerate the process to the point where boiling occurs readily. The hyrogen produced is called 'nascent' and is more reactive than the bottled version. You will find that the gas also carries with it molecules of the NaOH particularly if boiling point has been reached and therefore it will be quite corrosive.

I am not sure what would be results if mixed with ethanol as a constant boiling mixture will result and the product will contain a certain amount of the ethanol in vapour form. This may or may not be a problem for you.

You may wish to experiment with cooling a sample of the NaOH down using liquid CO2 for example to determine the best dilution rate to avoid freezing.

As far as gas production is concerned that is not affected by the low temperature other than it obeying the Universal Gas Laws in respect of the volume generated at the solution temperature.

You will also find that fragmented Al is far more reactive than slabs/ blocks, so this also assists in getting things going.

Good luck,

Massey.

Hello NSS,

As kids, my brother and I used to make hydrogen the easy way and without any chemicals which would have been nearly impossible for us to get a hold of.

We used to employ a hefty DC transformer from our model Railroad by building two electrodes with aluminum foil and placing them into upside-down test tubes that were then placed in a lab beaker full of water. The hydrogen would collect in the tops of the test tubes and when still under water it was easy to capture and transfer into our homebuilt toy "blimp". But many times we would just "light-off" the gas for the hell of it!!!!! We did find that by dissolving ordinary table salt into hot water worked the best. Beats me why it did this. I'm no chemist!

Try it, you'll like it!!!! *LOL*

Have a great sunny day!!!!!!

You might want to look at methanol/water reforming.