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Hydrogen Oxygen Seperation? Answered

Is there an easy process I can use to separate my hydrogen from oxygen after the fact on my HHO (I don't know what you want to call it but this is easiest) generator.


You don't need to encase the electrodes - that effectively increases the distance between them, increasing the current demand.

All you have to do is catch the rising bubbles.

You can bring the electrodes closer by putting a fine plastic or cloth mesh between them - water will pass through it, but bubbles will not.


Thanks, I planned on that but I was worried the bubbles would slip out here and there.


Best Answer 7 years ago

After electrolysis, the answer is "No, not for normal humans".

The best and easiest way to separate the two is to collect them separately to start off with - Have an inverted funnel in the water, one over each electrode, and pipe the gas off from the narrow ends of the funnels to individual containers.

Thanks, I did build one of these like you say, I used pvc to encase each electrode and left the bottom open. They are 3 inches away max and it still has 0 output, unlike my original design that was exactly the same but missing the encasments, any ideas.

"A common school method of breaking water into H2 and O2 is electrolysis. H2 comes off at the cathode (negative ) pole and O2 comes of at the anode (positive) pole. Unfortunately, chlorine will also come off of the anode from chlorine ions in the system. The water needs to be conductive. Believe it or not, pure water is not a good conductor. Look up A. G. Bell's breakthru on the telephone. He added sulfuric acid to the water.
You could check the amount of time it took to collect a tube of each gas for distilled water (no ozone) (boil it and cool it in a sealed full container as it will pick up CO2 from the air. Then try tap water, water with a spoonful of salt, a saturated salt solution, a tablespoon of vinegar could be added for another jar. Lemon juice might be used. You could get wild and try a aspirin solution. Make up your solutions with the boiled distilled water, so you do not add the variable of the different makeup water salts and CO2. At your age, I would stay away from pool acid and battery acid unless you had the help of a chemist or teacher that is qualified.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida"

Quoted from http://www.finishing.com/382/71.shtml


not really - you need to collect in separate containers at the time