Instead of Stainless steel

[Xionz]

Can i use Zinc plates ?

[Stratous]

Zinc will cause alot of crud to build up in your water vey quickly. They will produce hydrogen/oxygen, but at the cost of having nasty rust colored goop in your generator.

[dlw]

what about copper or lead as used in car batteries so should be less corrosive as it usually sits in acid and distilled water

[Stratous]

what about copper or lead as used in car batteries so should be less corrosive as it usually sits in acid and distilled water

I have not tried it with copper or lead. I have also never tried electrolysis with an acid either. If your using sodium hydroxide or potassiom hydroxide then your using an alkaline, not an acid. Not sure how lead or copper would hold up.

[dennis13030]

Copper oxidizes badly.

[mikestrikes]

Copper oxidizes badly.

Yeah and FAST. My first test I have bare copper wire holding Alum plates in and man they turned green in a matter of seconds...

Now I'd like to see how Brass works !

[jimbo40]

I bet gold would work really well:
Buy my generator it's golden and will only cost $16,500, hey thats more then your car, and make sure you don't crash.

Stainless is the only non corrosive metel most people have access to.
You could try Carbon or maybe carbon fiber could work, but will cost you big and harded to find.

[Bigtoyota]

I've also read about people using the graphite from the center of pencils! It supposedly worked just fine.

[Stratous]

graphite will work very well, but its difficult to get large amounts of surface area using pencil lead. Large graphite electrodes are pretty expensive. Platinum, graphite, chromium, nickel and carbon all work better than SS, but are incredibly expensive.

[airdude]

What about it? Fairly cheap and very non corrosive. Available in sheets.