Water

you are all talking about hydrolosis right ?.....the means to break pure water H2O into H2 and O ?

Originally posted by imbalanced
you are all talking about hydrolosis right ?.....the means to break pure water H2O into H2 and O ?

I make hydrogen but I don't know if hydrolosis (your spelling) is the process I use.

I break the bond between hydrogen and oxygen by passing a current through water that has a small amount of salt in solution.

hydrolysis: Decomposition of a chemical compound by reaction with water, such as the dissociation of a dissolved salt or the catalytic conversion of starch to glucose.

Also: Main Entry: hy·dro·ly·sis
Pronunciation: hI-'dräl-&-s&s, "hI-dr&-'lI-
Function: noun
: a chemical process of decomposition involving the splitting of a bond and the addition of the hydrogen cation and the hydroxide anion of water —hy·dro·lyt·ic /"hI-dr&-'lit-ik/ adjective —hy·dro·lyt·i·cal·ly /-i-k(&-)lE/ adverb

If the definition fits..........

This is from a u2u but I thought I'd post it here, just in case others want to build their own:

Where do you hook up the positive and the negative wire? One I think is to the copper plate, correct?

One wire goes to the copper plate and one goes to the aluminum piece.

I used some cable that the TV guy left behind and sealed the ends that are in the water with silicone so that the reaction won't take place inside the cable. Only the center of the cable (the copper) is carrying the current.

The cables run from the two reaction plates, up the preasure tower, and out through two holes drilled near the top. I use two wire nuts to connect my adapter on the outside of the tank.

This way I can close the tower without wires getting in the way when I extract the hydrogen.

(I'm going to cut and paste this into the thread incase other members have the same question)

Originally posted by Chakotay
Is blowing in the wind...

The Solar Wind, that is. You see, hydrogen goes up... and up... and away, in the solar wind. No production and distribution system is going to be perfect, so there will be leaks. How long would primary fuel use take to dehydrate the Earth? I'm too tired to work the numbers, but the answer should be out there on the Net somewhere. The answer to this question will determine if Hydrogen can be a green fuel. Younger and more vigorous sleuths, please enlighten us.

Ok the leakage of hydrogen should be minimal I don't think that we have to worry about venting off the world's supply. Besides I think that the solar wind from the Sun actually delivers some hydrogen to the upper atmosphere which combines with the oxygen to become water vapor. Contrary to popular belief the Earth is not a closed system. There is matter being added all of the time. The meteors that burn up in the atmosphere don't just go away they get converted to ash and gasses are released including hydrogen. As far as the hydrogen being burned in these engines goes the only exhaust is water vapor. I would be concerned about all of the extra water vapor that would be released if we went to an all hydrogen energy system. The main problem with the idea of using a closed circuit system for powering a car is the amount of hydrogen needed to run the engine. Making hydrogen by using electricity is very inefficient. It is impossible to have the engine make enough electricity to convert the water to hydrogen. The only way that using hydrogen made by electrolysis will work is if we have a supply of cheap electricity. There are therr possibilities for this. One is solar cells, but they would have to get alot more efficient. Enough solar cells to power a water cracking plant would take up an area the size of Rhode Island. The second is Nuclear Power. With the political and environmental issues I don't think that it is too likely. The last is my favorite. Geothermal. What you do is to sink a well deep into the Earth and use a superconductor as a heat sink to heat water to power a steam turbine.

Originally posted by tiddly54
it isnt hard to get water back together after you take it apart
hold a match to the hydrogen and it will go pop
then there is water

No, it's not hard at all. But a match won't do it. If you take H2 and O2 gas mixed in a bottle, they will not recombine into water. However, if you drop a small pebble of Palladium or Platinum into the mixture, it acts as a catalyst and allows the two to combine.

The surface of the metal allows for Hydrogen molecules (two covalently-bonded hydrogen atoms) to attach to its surface and fit in nice and snug, and their bond is weakened. This allows oxygen to break the bond and reform it with itself.

This is a very explosive reaction - both my freshman General Chemistry and senior Inorganic Chemistry professors demonstrated this.

Hydrogen cars use a platinum plate to do exactly this - you have a hydrogen fuel source (the fuel cell) and an oxygen source (the outside air that is taken in) and they are combined to make water. Very explosively, to add.

Originally posted by senseless04
Couldn't you just have an engine that runs on burning hydrogen, then stores the exhaust in a water tank. The engine turns an alternator which gives a current to the water splits it back into hydrogen and oxygen. Then starts the cycle all over again? If the atoms are always still there, then this should be possible, is there not much power in burning hydrogen?

Keep in mind that this reaction generates a lot of heat. That heat will allow for the reaction of H2 and O2 to form other stuff. Remember that the O2 source comes from the outside air, which is about 79% N2, 20% O2, and 1% other junk.

I think it would be a good idea to collect the water, but it would be feasible to be immediately used by the car to make more H2. The process of separating water takes a lot of energy, and is not 100% efficient. The process of recombining H2 and O2 is not 100% efficient. An article in Scientific American stated that, at best, hydrogen fuel would be less than 20% energy-efficient - about the same as gasoline.

The best thing to do would be to desalinate ocean water using energy from the sun (someone in Sweden came up with a method!) and then use more of the sun's energy to separate water to H2 and O2. This way, no additional chemicals would be used, and the inefficiencies in the method would be allowable because of the near-infinite power of the sun. This was also covered a few months later in Sci Am.

The water would be released into the atmosphere, and, hopefully, would eventally return to the oceans over brief time. I have not read much about this aspect.