Water to Hydrogen Generator

Have you ever really thought about what water is made up of? In this project, you will learn about the process of water electrolysis (splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen), build a miniature device yourself, and possibly come up with some cool ideas to use it for!

[Didn't put a material count as it depends how strong or how many generators you want, but for a general idea, the more washers you get, the more efficient the device will be at converting water to hydrogen.]

Materials you will need:

• Steel Washers (NOT ZINC)
• Long Steel Screws
• Steel Nuts
• Plastic Bottle (I used a peanut butter Jiff jar)
• Similar sized plastic bottle (I'll reference this is Jiff2, as saying second plastic bottle will get redudant)
• Drill with two different sized heads, one the size of the screws, the other will be about as thick as a pencil.
• 2 Pieces of Plastic Tubing (I used around 1-2 feet of tubing, with a diameter of about 1/8 inch)
• Lighter
• Battery
• Wires
• Soldering Equipment (Not 100% needed, but it makes the process a lot easier)
• Hot Glue & Hot Glue Gun
• Switch Electronic Part
• Battery Holder Electronic Part (Again, not 100% needed, but it makes it a lot easier)

Water. We all drink it, but are we all really aware that something we can easily drink, can be separated into highly flammable components? That is exactly what we are doing here!

Water, or H2O, is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Hydrogen by itself is very flammable, with the Hindenburg being a fantastic example of that, and oxygen is as well. We can separate water into these two gases by using something simply that we can find every day; electricity.

We will be submerging two steel rods into water, and then powering them with electricity. This will cause the steel to electrolyze the water, breaking apart the water molecules, forming hydrogen and oxygen, which we will then transfer via a small plastic tube.

PS: In case you were curious about why drain cleaner is here, tap water isn't the best for performing electrolysis, so we will be adding something with ions, hence the drain cleaner. This will cause the reaction to speed up, and allow us to actually see it occurring.

For this step, grab the steel washers, the two long steel screws, the steel nuts, and your plastic bottle (my Jiff Jar).

1. Drill two holes in the top of the plastic bottle, big enough that the screws can go through.
2. Place two washers on each side of the plastic top, this will protect the screw from tearing through the top of the plastic bottle from the weight of the washers.
3. Thread the first bolt onto each of the rods, you want to make sure there is an offset between each first bolt, otherwise the washers will make contact. This will be bad, so don't do that.
4. Now thread the washers on, and follow it with a bolt, and so on and so forth. I'll post a picture showing what it should look like.
5. Once you are done, fill the Jiff jar (plastic container) with some water, and add some drain cleaner to help the process along once you hook up the battery.
6. This image linked here shows a good idea of what it should look like, if your washers are not rectangle, don't worry, it doesn't matter all that much.
7. After that, drill another hole in the Jiff Jar, and then put your plastic tubing section in it. This will guide the hydrogen out of the bottle, and into another bottle, or just into open space.

This is an optional step, but if you take a second plastic container, and drill two holes in it, you can make a failsafe in case the hydrogen backs up.

1. Drill two holes into the top
2. Put the tubing that is connected to the first container into one of the holes, and make sure the tubing goes deep.
3. Fill the second container with water, ensuring that the first tube is covered by water.
4. Put the second tubing into the container's second hole, making sure this one IS NOT covered by the water.
5. This will make it so the gas will flow out of the first tube, up through the water, and into the second tube.
6. this also makes sure that the gas cannot combust further then the second jar, which rarely happens in the first place.

This is pretty simple, but easily messed up, as I can say from personal experience. I'll post an image showing what parts go where.

1. Solder a wire to each end of the steel screws, making sure not to connect them.
2. Solder one of the wires connected to a steel screw to the switch.
3. Solder the switch to another wire.
4. Solder the wire connected to the switch to one end of the battery holder.
5. Solder the unsoldered end of the battery holder to another wire, and then solder that to the other unsoldered steel screw.
6. This is a lot of soldering, but for the battery holder, it doesn't really matter whether it is the positive or negative terminal, as long as the steel screws DO NOT TOUCH.
7. The second image is my setup, with the tube sticking out of the red lid, please note, I did not use a switch as I can just pop the battery in and out when needed. You can see the two screws on the right with the washers and nuts.

I couldn't really think of a good name for this portion, but I think I got a pretty good title. Hydrogen and oxygen gas will be highly explosive, but as long as we ignite it safely in small amounts, it should be pretty easy and fun to use. In this step, we want to make a system so that even if the flame does somehow pass up the tube into the device, the whole thing won't explode in a fiery cloud.

A way of doing this easily is to simply use the properties of certain substances, water is more dense than any gas that I can possibly think of, so if we submerge a plastic tube end into it, the hydrogen gas will flow through the tube, through the water, and float up into the second container. Once inside this second container, the gas won't be able to flow back inside the tube, as the gas is a lot less dense than water, so there is no way for any fire or spark to go through the water into the original tube.

If we put a second piece of tubing on Jiff2, this will allow the hydrogen gas, after flowing through the water, to go through the second tube, and to wherever we desire. This is a tough concept to write about, so I'll try illustrating it clearly through drawings and some images.

Press the switch once the battery is in the holder, and you should see bubbles rising from the steel washers inside the Jiff jar. If you decided to pour a little drain cleaner in the water, you should see a higher rate of bubbles, which means water is being separated into hydrogen and oxygen gas. You did it!

Now that you made something that produces a gas out of liquid without using heat, take a minute and think about what you could apply this thinking to? If this gas combusts, could you use it as a form of ignition? What about how a car drives? Could hydrogen replace gas as a viable fuel source? All interesting questions that I had that prompted further insight on how topics work.

Good luck!

PS: A little bonus, but when the water is separated, it creates oxygen and hydrogen, if you wanted to, the hydrogen gas would move towards the negative powered rod (cathode), and the oxygen gas would move towards the positive powered rod (anode)

PPS: The image linked here is from a YT channel named Alex Labs, he makes Iron Man armor, and the image is a hydrogen generator designed in the visual of Tony Stark's arc reactor. He uses it to power his synthetic muscles and later, a repulsor.