Eliminate this possibility, please.

[mangyhyena]

I was looking at chemical reactions to produce hydrogen on the net. I had read an experiment performed by a member here before I looked this up. In the experiment here I saw that a member used aluminum foil in his electrolyzer unit and produced a massive amount of what he believed to be HHO. Then I looked up a method of producing pure hydrogen. This method uses pellets made of a combination of aluminum and gallium submersed in water to produce pure hydrogen. Here is the way it works. Aluminum will separate oxygen from hydrogen in water. What stops this from happening is a thin film that forms over the aluminum, caused by oxidation, the instant aluminum is submersed in water. Gallium stops this film from forming. Without this film coating aluminum in water, the aluminum absorbs the oxygen in the water, which breaks the hydrogen loose. The hydrogen can then be used to run an engine or hydrogen cell.

Now, back to the experiment here. What if the electrolyzer in his unit produced only a little bit of HHO while the aluminum produced the bulk of the gas, which I believe may have been pure hydrogen, not HHO? What if, when he put electricity through the aluminum foil, he broke that film and allowed the aluminum to react with the water to produce pure hydrogen?

If I'm right about this then an almost unlimited amount of hydrogen could be produced with very little input of energy. The input energy would be used ONLY to break this thin film on the aluminum, not to break loose the hydrogen from the oxygen. It would then be the aluminum absorbing oxygen from the water that produced the hydrogen as a byproduct for use in an ICE engine, not electrolysis.

The way to test this and prove it wrong so I can move on is to put a piece of aluminum in water and hit it with electricity. If no hydrogen forms then I'm wrong and I can get this out of my head. If hydrogen does form then I don't know what I'll do. Freak out? LOL.

It got me to thinking about Stan Meyer. What if he was using aluminum pipes instead of the stainless steel pipes like he claimed? What if he was hitting the aluminum pipes with just enough electricity to break the film so the aluminum could react with the water and make hydrogen? After all, did you read anywhere that anyone confirmed that those pipes were indeed stainless steel and not aluminum? Would you be able to tell the difference between stainless steel pipes and aluminum pipes if they were sitting in water and you couldn't hold them in your hands? And remember also that his "electrolyzer" produced no heat. Perhaps it produced no heat because breaking that film around aluminum requires no where near as much electricity as electrolyzing water.

OK, so I've absolutely got to be wrong about this, right? Please, please prove me wrong and post about it here. The sooner I get this foolishness out of my head the better. Thanks.

[HYDROTEKPRO]

I also hope I'm wrong with my answer. Because if I'm wrong, then we know a little shortcut to make more HHO.

First, you never get something for nothing. Simply dropping a piece of aluminum in water won't do anything, except wet the previously dry aluminum. However, if the aluminum is submersed in a corrosive alkali solution such as the KOH or NaOH electrolytes most of use, then that's when the fizzies start! Add electricity and you get even more. But the aluminum begins to get eaten by the corrosive electrolyte, and eventually will dissolve away.

If you use plain tap water or distilled water with NO electrolyte chemical, and only use electricity, well then it's our guesses and imagination until one of us does the test and posts honest results.

[mangyhyena]

Honestly, I don't expect this to work. But if there is even a chance it will, then it's worth looking into. If anything, we'll know yet another way NOT to produce hydrogen. lol.

Basically, what I'm wondering is if electricity, pulsed or otherwise, can burn through that film that prevents aluminum from interacting with water and producing hydrogen. With the aluminum/gallium pellets, gallium is what breaks that film. I just want to know if a small amount of electricity will accomplish the same thing. Perhaps using stainless steel mesh over aluminum would burn that film off. Or maybe just shocking the aluminum without anything else would do it. Or perhaps I'm totally wrong and gallium is the only material that will prevent that film from forming.

Stan Meyer used no corrosive substance, just tap water. He obscured the blueprints of his invention to keep others from reproducing his results. Or, someone else obscured his blueprints. Either way, we can't reproduce his work today. I'm wondering if he used the chemical reaction between aluminum and water rather than electrolyzing his water. It would look like electrolysis, but would in fact be him breaking that film on the aluminum with electricity. That is, if I'm right and aluminum can be made to react with water using electricity rather than gallium.

IMHO, it's worth finding out. Please post here as soon as someone tries this so we can either advance this line of thought or bury it and get onto something else with more potential.

Good luck.

[snapper1d]

Well I just tried the aluminum.It doesnt put off as much heat but it also doesnt put off as much gas.I had it hooked strait to a 12v battery.It works until the aluminum get a heavy thick oxide coating.It didnt look as if it was eating away at the aluminum but it looked as if it was coated over with the baking soda.I did have to add more baking soda than I would with stainless.With just tap water it hardly does anything at all.Of course you know what happens if you use sodium hydroxide,the aluminum would last about 10 minutes.

[daveczrn]

aluminum and NaOH

5 g coarse aluminum powder is combined with approx. 20 ml of 40 percent sodium hydroxide solution in a test tube. The tube is placed in a tall 2 liter glass beaker.
Photos 3, 4: Shortly thereafter, a violent reaction causing gas production begins. An oxyhydrogen gas probe returns positive.
Under normal circumstances, aluminum does not react with water, as an impermeable protective layer composed of aluminum hydroxide either forms within seconds or is already in place. With the addition of sodium hydroxide, the formation of a protective layer is prevented. With the production of aluminates (Al(OH)4-), the amphoteric (capable of acting as either an acid or a base) aluminum hydroxide Al(OH)3 goes in solution:


2 Al + 6 H2O > 2 Al(OH)3 + 3 H2

Al(OH)3 + NaOH > Na+ + [Al(OH)4]-
A layer of aluminum oxide previously formed by passive corrosion is dissolved by the addition of sodium hydroxide. For this reason, the reaction takes place at the beginning relatively slowly:


Al2O3 + 2 NaOH + 3 H2O > 2 Na+ + 2 [Al(OH)4]-


it doesn;t look like it produces H2 or O2

[snapper1d]

I didnt check to see if that gas would burn.I had thought about it but there was so very little that if it had been hho it wasnt worth working with anyway.

[HHOhoper]

Well I just tried the aluminum.It doesnt put off as much heat but it also doesnt put off as much gas.I had it hooked strait to a 12v battery.It works until the aluminum get a heavy thick oxide coating.It didnt look as if it was eating away at the aluminum but it looked as if it was coated over with the baking soda.I did have to add more baking soda than I would with stainless.With just tap water it hardly does anything at all.Of course you know what happens if you use sodium hydroxide,the aluminum would last about 10 minutes.

How long did it take for the oxide coating to form? Also, what about the Gallium? I also wonder if the water temp plays a factor as a variable. Do you know what the amp draw was when you had it hooked to the 12V battery? I'd be interested to hear all of that.

[snapper1d]

I had one of those water4gas plexiglass forms you wrap your wire on just laying around.I used some 1/16" alum rods and wrapped them on the plexiglass just like you do the wire.I dont have my amp meter yet so I really dont know what amps it was pulling.The coating bulit up on the wire rodd in about 10 minutes to where the production of that gas had almost quit.I was using a pint and a half wide mouth jar so the w4g unit just did a close fit.I changed the polarity of the rods and then it started putting out gas again until that electrode built up with the oxide.From what I saw it was not worth fooling with at all.

[mangyhyena]

Well, that is one possibility eliminated. Thank you for taking the time to test that. It's a downer that it didn't work, but at least I know. Much appreciated.

I really thought that electrocuting that film off aluminum might have been how Stan had managed to produce hydrogen with only 1 amp. Twas a great theory till it was tested and found lacking. Back to the drawing board.

Thank you all again for taking the time and effort to test that. Because of your efforts we know for sure now.

[Smith03Jetta]

Keep in mind the relative size of Hydrogen molecules compared to Oxygen molecules. If the Aluminum is absorbing most or all of the Oxygen as suggested then you should expect a lot smaller volume of GAS production than with SS electrodes alone. You will still have a significant amount of usable Hydrogen and no or very little Oxygen. The lower gas production volume is no indication that the system is not producing a usable volume of pure hydrogen gas. I think more testing is warranted. Don't worry about volume, put together a working model with a sizable mass of aluminum and try it on an engine and see if you can get MPG results.