HHO Conversion on my Legacy

[Yo'J]

Anyone make balloons for the fourth?

[Yo'J]

I am not impressed. Here a guy flys some hundred balloons in a chair and no one could make one,1, uno balloon. Is the output that weak?

[McDave]

I am not impressed. Here a guy flys some hundred balloons in a chair and no one could make one' date='1, uno balloon. Is the output that weak?[/quote']

 

Maybe they did but got Hindenburg-ed before having a chance to tell us about it. :-p

[s'ko]

well I got my Sodium Hydroxide in. Now to call Mcmaster Carr and get the other pieces.

 

BW

[Yo'J]

Maybe they did but got Hindenburg-ed before having a chance to tell us about it. :-p

 

 

That is the idea! BANG!!

 

What else would you do with a hydrogen balloon? YA HOO!!!

[hooziewhatsit]

Anyone make balloons for the fourth?

 

A few years ago myself, a friend and my brother electrolosized water to get hydrogen in a balloon for that very reason.

 

We rectified wall AC to get ~170vDC, @ 5-6 Amps

 

After running for half an hour, in a water bath since it was so hot (850W), we got about a 6" balloon with gas in it

 

Overall, a LOT of energy to make a little boom.

 

-Dave

[joechip]

did not know nickel and molybdenum were good catalysts. i was assuming that aluminum and copper were good for this because they don't oxidize. aluminum is a better conductor than ss, all metals containing iron don't conduct as well as aluminum or copper.

any updates on those using the hydrogen on a car?

 

Nickel and Cobalt are excellent H2 generation catalysts. Platinum, Ruthenim and Gold are better, but a ton more expensive. See any 'Volcano plot' of M-H bond energy vs. Exchange-Current Density in a good electrochemistry text to get an idea. The good catalytic metals are the ones at the top of the volcano. Catalysts, in this case, would lower the activation energy barrier to water hydrolysis resulting in lower voltage being needed to drive the cell. In the case of constant voltage, then the amperage needed would drop.

 

Molybdenum is not an excellent M-H catalyst, Nickel is really the star in 316 stainless. In H2 fuel-cell research of oxidation of H2-emitting compounds (think metal hydrides) it seems a mix of Ni-Co works better than either Ni or Co, for reasons unknown. So, high Nickel alloys, or Ni-Co alloys would be the most affordable solutions and will not degrade in a near-neutral pH solution containing citrate or carbonate. I would not recommend hydroxide solutions.

If/when I build one of these my electrolyte would be either citrate or borate depending on the temperature application.

 

I hope this helps. BTW, I'm an electrochemist working on research in this area.

[McDave]

Nickel and Cobalt are excellent H2 generation catalysts. Platinum, Ruthenim and Gold are better, but a ton more expensive. See any 'Volcano plot' of M-H bond energy vs. Exchange-Current Density in a good electrochemistry text to get an idea. The good catalytic metals are the ones at the top of the volcano. Catalysts, in this case, would lower the activation energy barrier to water hydrolysis resulting in lower voltage being needed to drive the cell. In the case of constant voltage, then the amperage needed would drop.

 

Molybdenum is not an excellent M-H catalyst, Nickel is really the star in 316 stainless. In H2 fuel-cell research of oxidation of H2-emitting compounds (think metal hydrides) it seems a mix of Ni-Co works better than either Ni or Co, for reasons unknown. So, high Nickel alloys, or Ni-Co alloys would be the most affordable solutions and will not degrade in a near-neutral pH solution containing citrate or carbonate. I would not recommend hydroxide solutions.

If/when I build one of these my electrolyte would be either citrate or borate depending on the temperature application.

 

I hope this helps. BTW, I'm an electrochemist working on research in this area.

Any chance you're at MIT?

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN3145191020080731?sp=true

 

MIT develops way to bank solar energy at home

 

Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:07pm EDT

By Scott Malone

 

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A U.S. scientist has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night.

 

A new catalyst produces the oxygen and hydrogen that fuel cells use to generate electricity, while using far less energy than current methods.

 

With this catalyst, users could rely on electricity produced by photovoltaic solar cells to power the process that produces the fuel, said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who developed the new material.

 

"If you can only have energy when the sun is shining, you're in deep trouble. And that's why, in my opinion, photovoltaics haven't penetrated the market," Daniel Nocera, an MIT professor of energy, said in an interview at his Cambridge, Massachusetts, office. "If I could provide a storage mechanism, then I make energy 24/7 and then we can start talking about solar."

 

Solar has been growing as a power source in the United States -- last year the nation's solar capacity rose 45 percent to 750 megawatts. But it is still a tiny power source, producing enough energy to meet the needs of about 600,000 typical homes, and only while the sun is shining, according to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association.

 

Most U.S. homes with solar panels feed electricity into the power grid during the day, but have to draw back from the grid at night. Nocera said his development would allow homeowners to bank solar energy as hydrogen and oxygen, which a fuel cell could use to produce electricity when the sun was not shining.

 

"I can turn sunlight into a chemical fuel, now I can use photovoltaics at night," said Nocera, who explained the discovery in a paper written with Matthew Kanan published on Thursday in the journal Science.

 

Companies including United Technologies Corp produce fuel cells for use in industrial sites and on buses. Automakers including General Motors Corp and Honda Motor Co are testing small fleets of fuel-cell powered vehicles.

 

POTENTIAL FOR CLEAN ENERGY

Fuel cells are appealing because they produce electricity without generating the greenhouse gases associated with global climate change. But producing the hydrogen and oxygen they run on typically requires burning fossil fuels.

 

That has prompted researchers to look into cleaner ways of powering fuel cells. Another researcher working at Princeton University last year developed a way of using bacteria that feed on vinegar and waste water to generate hydrogen, with minimal electrical input.

 

James Barber, a biochemistry professor at London's Imperial College, said in a statement Nocera's work "opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production, thus reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."

 

Nocera's catalyst is made from cobalt, phosphate and an electrode that produces oxygen from water by using 90 percent less electricity than current methods, which use the costly metal platinum.

 

The system still relies on platinum to produce hydrogen -- the other element that makes up water.

 

"On the hydrogen side, platinum works well," Nocera said. "On the oxygen side ... it doesn't work well and you have to put way more energy in than needed to get the (oxygen) out."

Current methods of producing hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells operate in a highly corrosive environment, Nocera said, meaning the entire reaction must be carried out in an expensive highly-engineered container.

 

But at MIT this week, the reaction was going on in an open glass container about the size of two shot glasses that researchers manipulated with their bare hands, with no heavy safety gloves or goggles.

 

"It's cheap, it's efficient, it's highly manufacturable, it's incredibly tolerant of impurity and it's from earth-abundant stuff," Nocera explained.

 

Nocera has not tried to construct a full-sized version of the system, but suggested that the technologies to bring this into a typical home could be ready in less than a decade.

 

The idea, which he has been working on for 25 years, came from reflecting on the way plants store the sun's energy.

 

"For the last six months, driving home, I've been looking at leaves, and saying, 'I own you guys now,'" Nocera said.

[hooziewhatsit]

Here's another article about it.

 

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=R0WJCT4PVEHPKQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=209900956

 

MIT's patented formulation of cobalt phosphate was dissolved in water. When the electrical current is passed through it to initiate electrolysis, the catalyst attached itself to the oxygen electrode to increase its efficiency. When the electrical current was turned off, the cobalt phosphate dissolved back into water.

[Ioku]

I though I’d add my experience with using hho in a Subaru, my test car was my 95 Impreza 1.8. the cell I built was better than some of the other ones you see people using and claiming great mpg gains it wasn’t some glass jar with wires and baking soda in it. I built a 4 cell unit that was wired in series so each cell ran at about 3.5 volts, splitting the 13.5 volts for the car 4 ways, this is more efficient because it’s the amps the do the work not the volts so keeping that volts low it best higher voltage just overheats the cell, and for my catalyst I used potassium hydroxide. The cell never overheated, ran at under 30 amps, and made about 2 liters of gas per minute, I also lean out the engine to, I used a rather primitive method I built a simple device that added voltage parallel with the O2 sensor to trick the ecu to think the engine was running rich so it world lean it out, it worked well enough that I could run it so lean the engine would almost stall at idle. But I never did get any change in my mpgs.

 

I’m not saying this to tell you to quit I hope you have success, it has been proven that adding hydrogen to an engine will make it run more efficiently and have a more complete burn of the fuel, even at a 14.7:1 fuel ratio not all the fuel gets burn so that equals wasted energy. But I think you will need to add more than something like 2 liters per minute, maybe 10 LPM would do it but it will be hard to produce that much efficiently.