The best way to get Hydrogen from water

Question

What is the best way to get hydrogen out of water while still being under control and using things that I can find around the house or have to buy only a minimal amount of supplies? I have been trying to find a way of perhaps using boron or aluminum to create boron oxide and hydrogen or aluminum oxide and hydrogen (no experimentation just paper work).

Answer 1

I would advise you NOT to play with hydrogen. It is a very explosive substance once it mixes with air. DO NOT use it anywhere near your home.

Answer 2

The easiest way is to use a motorcycle battery. Run a wire from the positive end to the water and the negative end to the water. When the bubbles start to form, one is pure oxygen and the other is pure hydrogen.

Don't do what my 8th grade physics teacher did though and try to kill everyone in the class by capturing the hydrogen in a test tube and lighting it on fire.

Answer 3

The easiest way to produced hydrogen (and oxygen) will be the electrolysis of water. Dropping a 9V battery in some water with an electrolyte will do the trick, but it's not very elegant. And it's hard to start and stop the reaction.

What I would suggest is to use two pencils for electrodes. Graphite is a conductor and it won't react with the chemicals in your electrolyzer. Cut off the erasers as the metal band and sharpen both ends. Repeat with a second pencil. Ideally, you should have a couple of wires with alligator clips at the ends, and a couple of test tubes or substitutes for them, and the equivalent of a beaker to do this in.

Dissolve a spoonful of sodium bicarbonate in the water in the beaker. The amount isn't too critical. This will become the electrolyte solution that will conduct electricity. Fill the test tubes with water and then turn them upside down in the water in the beaker. The tricky thing is to find some what to hold all of this together. The alligator clip leads go on the ends of the pencils and to the leads on the 9V battery. The pencils go into the solution at an angle so that the open ends of the test tubes are right above the tips so that they gas will travel up into the test tubes and displace the water, and collect the H2 and O2 gas.

Here's a picture.

http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC041148/mysite/el...

Except your pencils should be at an angle and the inverted (water filled) test tubes should be above the tips of the pencils. And one battery will work nicely.

http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/fil...

When all of this is held in place then water in the beaker will be decomposed by the electricity and and the gases will displace the water in the test tubes. Have fun.

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You can also produce hydrogen by reacting aluminum metal and sodium hydroxide solution.  It's the old "Drano bomb" trick.  The solid white "crystals" in Drano are NaOH.

The hydroxide ions dissolve the aluminum oxide coating on Al metal and expose the Al metal so that it can react with water to make H2 gas.

Al + H2O --> Al(OH)3 + H2(g)

In fact, the Drano company puts small pieces of Al foil in with the NaOH.  When it gets wet the reation starts and the H2 that is produced agitates the clog to help the NaOH dissolve it better.

The danger with this is not so much the H2 that is produced, that quickly dissipates in the air.  Instead it is the "caustic soda" (NaOH) that is left over.  Sodium hydroxide can produce nastier burns than many acids.  Dilute it with water, and then combine with NaHCO3 to neutralize it.  Careful, even that will create lots of bubbling and some heat.

===== Follow up ======

I would NOT recommend using sodium to generate hydrogen.  The reaction is too potentially dangerous.

Answer 4

I think your biggest challenge will be to figure out how to trap the hydrogen. The most efficient way is through a thermochemical process using sulfer-iodine. I wouldn't recommend playing with that stuff though. With household items, it might be easiest to set up some kind of electrolysis.  

Answer 5

using a piece of sodium. put it in a test tube containing water connected to a gas syringe.  

Answer 6

make sure u have distilled water cuz if there's salt in it, u might end up releasing chlorine in the air and die. haha. ok, take a 9 -12 volt battery or something like that and put two wires from the positve and negative ends in the water. the one wire that bubbles more is the hydrogen. so flip a test tube and put it in the water and so that there is no air in the test tube. when the wire goes in, the hydrogen will fill it up and u'll be left with pure hydrogen in the tube. i don't know if i explained it right but there are a bunch of videos on youtube. check them out.

Answer 7

ive done this before kind of fun get a bottle and put two screws in it about half way and put a small hole about an inch above the screws fill with water to just below the hole pass a current throught the water and h2 and O2 will bubble H2 from the negative terminal  and will rise above the O2 and the O2 will leave throught the hole and you will end up with H2 if you plan to blow it up theres an obvious way just make sure ur carful make a list of prcations b4 you do it, it will help trust me