To date, electrolysers - though quite effective at dissociating the water molecule into its constituent parts of Oxygen and Hydrogen - are considered to be inefficient and power hungry. The very fact that the gas evolved at the electrodes is directly proportional to the current passing through the cell sees to this.
But what do most people actually understand of even basic electrolysis, how well is it really understood?
From my experiences, it seems that the regular Science Forums don’t like to talk about anything other than what they can already explain, and I’ve had threads completely removed from these forums simply because they did not fit in with the mainstream science. Quite absurd.
One thread I had removed from the Advanced Physics Forum, simply asked, quote: ‘Exactly how does electrolysis work?’
When a boff came back with, ‘you simply pass a current through water to break it down’, I knew it was going to be downhill from there. To cut a long story short, no one could give me a satisfactory answer to this apparently very simple question. They simply did not know how electrolysis actually works other than what they we’re taught at school. My thread then rather conveniently got mislaid - so much for the Advanced Physicists.
Let me ask you this. Why does adding an electrolyte to water in an electrolyser result in greater gas output?
The Advanced Physicists will tell you that the electrolyte introduces more current carriers into the solution thereby allowing more current to flow, producing more gas… simples!
But, why is this? Given that those introduced current carriers do not actually interact at the electrodes; they do not themselves take up or drop charges at the electrodes, so what is that all about?
I think we tend to take far too much for granted. Things are not always as clear cut as they may at first seem.
But what do most people actually understand of even basic electrolysis, how well is it really understood?
From my experiences, it seems that the regular Science Forums don’t like to talk about anything other than what they can already explain, and I’ve had threads completely removed from these forums simply because they did not fit in with the mainstream science. Quite absurd.
One thread I had removed from the Advanced Physics Forum, simply asked, quote: ‘Exactly how does electrolysis work?’
When a boff came back with, ‘you simply pass a current through water to break it down’, I knew it was going to be downhill from there. To cut a long story short, no one could give me a satisfactory answer to this apparently very simple question. They simply did not know how electrolysis actually works other than what they we’re taught at school. My thread then rather conveniently got mislaid - so much for the Advanced Physicists.
Let me ask you this. Why does adding an electrolyte to water in an electrolyser result in greater gas output?
The Advanced Physicists will tell you that the electrolyte introduces more current carriers into the solution thereby allowing more current to flow, producing more gas… simples!
But, why is this? Given that those introduced current carriers do not actually interact at the electrodes; they do not themselves take up or drop charges at the electrodes, so what is that all about?
I think we tend to take far too much for granted. Things are not always as clear cut as they may at first seem.
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