Francisco PACHECO Hydrogen Generator

[Jetijs]

Here is the salt water after some use with the gunk settled on the bottom:



These are my end caps with the magnesium rod fastened to them:



This is how it will look like when the outer stainless steel tube will be attached:





I have all the steel tubes cut to size, now I need to weld some threaded steel rods to them that will go through the plastic end caps like this is done with the magnesium rods. The magnesium will be easy to change this way

Thank you!
Jetijs

[Slovenia]

Great Job

Slovenia, thanks for the filtering tip
I am thinking of building the assembly like this:



Or this:



The second setup allows me to put a pump and a filter in between those two bottom T pieces, but I don't know if this will work good, because since the gas bubbles up, these bubbles might keep also all the gunk upside the cell when it is running, because the gunk is so fine, it is like a suspension and it takes a while to settle down. A better way would be to fully circulate all the water from the cell, might be that the filtering of the lower part only does nothing good. Anyway, this will be just the first test and this is just what I can throw together very fast. If there will be a potential to this thing, then I can build a better cell.
Those magnesium rods are 20mm in diameter and 200mm long. Cost about 5$ a piece. I will bolt them to the upper caps of the vertical pipes and I will also bolt a stainless steel tube to the same cap so that the electrodes can be remover easily.

Thanks,
Jetijs

Wow Jetijs,

Very good design. I like your design much better than mine.

Best Regards,
Slovenia

[Jetijs]

Thanks
Later I still want to incorporate your filter system in this setup
I am not sure yet, but I think that all the white gunk is magnesium hydroxide, if so then there is some uses to this and it is not something you would throw out. It acts as an antacid and in larger dosages causes diarrhea This is what is called milk magnesia. Also it is a great isolator and great fireproof material because at higher temperatures it releases water and turns into magnesium oxide. And magnesium oxide is also great fireproof material and isolator Look it up on wikipedia

[dambit]

Hi Jetijs,

Setup is looking good.

Where did you get your Mg rods from?

Cheers,

Steve

[Jetijs]

Those are from a water heater part supplier. They are used as anode in boilers to prevent corrosion, as active metal if any corrosion happens, it will consume the magnesium anode first, leaving the rest of the boiler in tact

[Slovenia]

Procurement

Those are from a water heater part supplier. They are used as anode in boilers to prevent corrosion, as active metal if any corrosion happens, it will consume the magnesium anode first, leaving the rest of the boiler in tact

Thanks Jetijs. Great to know. You are a very sharp fellow indeed.

[Cloxxki]

Exciting work!

I wonder, is any research known to indicate how much energy (in burnable H) is produced, compared to simply burning the Mg? In school we burned a strip of Mg, the size of a sandwich bags clip. That was a load of fury. If one could have 1kg of Mg strip, control the burn, insulate it, and then harvest energy release, that would have some substance as well, I supposed. Thinking of it, Mg burns well hotter hotter than H2O breaks, doesn't it? Would a burning strip of Mg underwater (if it doesn't extinguish that is) be able to rip the O2 for oxidation and leave the H to be burned externally with ambient oxygen? If too off-topic, please don't reply to me, but open a new thread.

[citfta]

Magnesium and water

@ Cloxxki,

I was a volunteer firefighter for 26 years and I can tell you for sure you don't want to try burning magnesium and putting it in water. You will get one great big explosion. VW engines in the earlier Beetles and maybe later had magnesium blocks. If one of those caught fire the only way we could contain it was to try and bury it with sand. If you threw water on it there would be a big explosion. The magnesium is indeed hot enough to break down the water and then the H and O2 recombine for a really big boom. Please be very careful with burning magnesium.


Carroll

[Cherryman]

Good work Jetijs!

Just thinking out loud:

- Would there be any production difference between flowing water and stationary water?

- Can you "throttle" the production by making one of the elements moving in/out (or waterlevel, that could influence filteringsystem)

- Fish tank, pond and other filtersystems are good donor projects (fora, websites) voor additional information

- Direction and speed of the waste sediment (flow, sink or both)?

- As it is metal, maybe magnets will have any intresting effects



- This would make a good fuelcell source for the "bloombox"

[Slovenia]

Mg is to expensive

Exciting work!

I wonder, is any research known to indicate how much energy (in burnable H) is produced, compared to simply burning the Mg? In school we burned a strip of Mg, the size of a sandwich bags clip. That was a load of fury. If one could have 1kg of Mg strip, control the burn, insulate it, and then harvest energy release, that would have some substance as well, I supposed. Thinking of it, Mg burns well hotter hotter than H2O breaks, doesn't it? Would a burning strip of Mg underwater (if it doesn't extinguish that is) be able to rip the O2 for oxidation and leave the H to be burned externally with ambient oxygen? If too off-topic, please don't reply to me, but open a new thread.

The magnesium is way to expensive to use the way you are suggesting.

[dambit]

Good work Jetijs!

Just thinking out loud:

- Would there be any production difference between flowing water and stationary water?

- Can you "throttle" the production by making one of the elements moving in/out (or waterlevel, that could influence filteringsystem)

- Fish tank, pond and other filtersystems are good donor projects (fora, websites) voor additional information

- Direction and speed of the waste sediment (flow, sink or both)?

- As it is metal, maybe magnets will have any intresting effects



- This would make a good fuelcell source for the "bloombox"

Hi Cherryman,

In a full scale setup it would be well recomended to have the electrolyte flowing. As the electrolyte becomes saturated the system produces less gas. Pacheco also recomended including a heat exchange coil in the flow loop to help control the temp.

If you want to "throttle" the reaction, simply put a variable resitor as the load between the terminals.

As far as magnets go, I'm not sure. The only metal that would be affected would be the Steel.

Including a simple sediment filter in the flow loop is all you would need to keep the electrolyte clean. Just empty it every now and again and you'll be right.

Cheers,

Steve

[Cloxxki]

@ Cloxxki,

I was a volunteer firefighter for 26 years and I can tell you for sure you don't want to try burning magnesium and putting it in water. You will get one great big explosion. VW engines in the earlier Beetles and maybe later had magnesium blocks. If one of those caught fire the only way we could contain it was to try and bury it with sand. If you threw water on it there would be a big explosion. The magnesium is indeed hot enough to break down the water and then the H and O2 recombine for a really big boom. Please be very careful with burning magnesium.


Carroll

Thanks for the advice, and I know, it's nasty stuff.
In workshops where magnesium is made into parts such as for bicycles, huge fires have been known to run.
One would wonder though, which puts out mor energy, the burning or the slow oxidization which releases the Hydrogen.

[dambit]

Hi All,

Magnesium is an odd material. It easily ignites when being turned on a lathe but welds better than aluminium. Go figure

Cheers,

Steve

P.S that's aluminum for all the yanks out there

[Jetijs]

Hi all
Today was a day with no success. I have several problems and one of them is how to glue the plastic gas outlet fittings to the PVC end cap of each cell. Have a look:





I had to grind away the threaded part from the fittings so that the inner side of the end cap is flat and the magnesium rod is still perpendicular to the end cap. I need to somehow glue the plastic outlet fitting to the PVC end cap. I tried crazy glue, super glue and even melting both plastics together as you can see - nothing works well. When melted, both plastics do not fuse together good. I will try the two component bison epoxy glue and see how that works. Maybe someone can recommend some other way?
Thanks,
Jetijs

[citfta]

Plastic welding

Hi Jetijs,

When I worked in industrial maintenance we had a plastic welding machine. It was a simple thing. It had a heat element attached to a small diameter tube. We had a supply of different kinds of filler rod for PVC or vinyl, etc. After the tube got hot we fed the filler rod into one end of the tube while sliding the other end along the seam we wanted to weld. The filler rod got hot enough to melt into both sides of the seam. Similar to the process of welding with a filler rod and tig or gas welding. The tube was cut at an angle on the end that went next to the part your were welding. As I recall the tube was only about 4 or 5 inches long. With your skills you might even be able make something that would do the same thing. Another thought is maybe you could use a hot glue gun to fasten them together since I don't think there would be much stress on the parts.

Carroll