Chemical experiment not going well

Ignoramus25884 fired this volley in news:nqednTWoAO1RF6DUnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

electrolysis.

produced

You're getting copper sulfate, magnesium (hydr)oxide, and hydrogen.

Change to a mild acid. Use stainless steel electrodes.

Try a 5% solution of sulfuric acid (battery acid).

LLoyd

plain salt water is the easiest and safest.

Bluish tint sounds like the copper is oxidizing (though using up *all* the oxygen seems a bit much). Googling around, I've seen a suggestion of using pencil lead as the electrode.

Carbon electrodes will also work, and you won't have them oxidize. Take a pencil with a thick lead and cut the wood off of it. Magnesium sulphate will work fine.

if not for the stink of chlorine

Your voltage is too high if you are making chlorine.

here's some useful info

carbon electrode for arc lamps work great, assuming you can find any. Even with them, the anode starts to powder and fall apart.

Pretty much any electrolytic cell is going to turn nasty looking/into sludge.

I have some EDM carbon pieces, they should work I think.

if they're made to conduct electricity, they should be ok. pencil lead is clay and other junk, it's not that good of a conductor.

"Cydrome Leader" wrote: (clip) carbon electrode for arc lamps work great, assuming you can find any. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ If you do find carbon arc electrodes, they will be copper clad. An easy source for carbon rods is flashlight batteries (cells, actually.)

Not in the alkaline style. It's positive electrode is a ribbon.

You can still get carbon zinc cells (with the carbon rod):

--Winston

I can't believe kids nowadays have to grow up without those gigantic

1.5v cells with the little screw terminals on top. They were a little biggera round than, and a bit taller than, a container of frozen orange juice, lemme go look...

Oh yeah, the No.6 dry cell/ignition cell/ telephone system cell!

Bigass carbon rod in one of those.

Dave

I remember as a kid playing with automatic pencil leads and AA NiCads, that the leads conducted well enough to glow white hot and burn away if they didn't pop first.

Do they still sell those things? I thought RoHS meant the death-knell of the dry cell (because of its mercury content).

Cydrome Leader fired this volley in news:ghk384$rui$ snipped-for-privacy@reader1.panix.com:

If you want chlorine gas as part of the product...

LLoyd

The reason you're not seeing any hydrogen is that the electrons at the cathode that would release it are producing magnesium instead which reacts with water if finely divided and it is turning into magnesium hydroxide. Years ago when I built a welder using an aircraft generator I made a electrolytic cell consisting of a glass bottle with salt water in it and two carbon electrodes protruding through the cork. With this device I could determine the polarity of the welding circuit by the greater amount of bubbles released at the negative terminal. Engineman

This probably isn't going to work well for you if you don't use platinum as an electrode. You were getting hydrogen off of the cathode, but the anode was reacting with the oxygen as soon as it was produced, so you never saw it. (Obviously, you'd only gotten half as much as the hydrogen, anyway.)

Maybe these guys can help.....

12 volt "lantern" batteries were an whopping $30 something last time saw one at a radio shack a few weeks ago. they must have been like $5 when I used to play with them.

I was surprised to see them at all in fact.

You don't get weird secondary reactions if you stick with the lowest possible voltage.

Use the largest flattest electrodes you can, as close as possible. The lower the resistance of the cell, the more current flow you get- which means you get more gas.

you can also use baking soda, it's cheap and won't corrode everything near you.

I've made gas generators in 500Ml nalgene squirt bottles. If you run enough current though it you ge the water to boil and end up with more steam than gas, which is a problem if you want hydrogen and oxygen for a fire.

has a section about how their electroyltic cells work. The torches they make are pretty nifty as well. The amount of heat they produce for the size of the flame is incredible, especially for soldering.