DIY Homemade Hydrogen (Aluminum + Water + Lye) 

although the paper is called "Reaction of Aluminum with Water to Produce Hydrogen" the paper contradicts itself on pg 6 and states that aluminium does not react with water by stating "However, in practice a piece of aluminum dropped into water will not react under room temperature conditions, or even with boiling water." One has to add something to water in order to decompose aluminium metal rapidly to produce hydrogen such as a hydroxide promoter eg sodium hydroxide (NaOH). And as you guess sodium hydroxide actually contains hydrogen! It's my view hydrogen does not originate from water but comes from the aluminium/hydroxide!

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At last when did your mother got amused???

excellent btw tetanus ONLY. exists when you step or scrape yourself from a nail that has animal sung on it... NEVER get a tennis vaccine again nonexistent unless you live on a farm and the nail is covered in S#!t! lol -all true..was in medical field for quite a while

I did the very same thing you did as a kid! I did all those dangerous things 😳! I too was a teen back in the late 60's 😅! Rockets and bombs outta matchheads, popular science mag advertising " science " stuff where to get fuse, chemicals, etc..

It was lord of the flies growing up. Parents just -gone- all the time😂 we got up to some shenanigans. It blows my mind the total lack of self reliance kids that are 3x as old as I was back then. Funny thing is- the best way to interest them in those things is to DO all the fun crazy exciting things we did as kids.

Thank you for making these videos!

increase the amount of NaOH in the solution gradually. And be sure to clean off any residue of the NaOH from the Aluminum. Be careful too NaOH is very caustic!

Electrolysis? It uses a voltage to break up water molecules into Hydrogen and Oxygen and they can be separated afterward. I think that electrolysis is the most common way of synthesizing H2 industrially. And thanks BTW

Not necessarily; there just needs to be an excess amount.

You still alive? Or already killed by the government??

What? You know that when they explode it it creates water?

@@polishnope5609 Then why is there drought?

There's oxygen in water as well. Don't expect the reaction to just go without stopping. You'll get the oxide layer anyway.

@@user-qn6kb7gr1d degas (vacuum) the water 💧?

@@davidprock904 not sure if that helps tbh. I looked it up and the process of degasing the water looks complicated. It's not the same as just pulling a vacuum.

Can confirm: much sexier... but still not enough. You don't want to inhale this H2 though, I'm sure a high enough concentration of caustic NaOH made it into the final stage to make it dangerous.

Sulfur hexafluoride or helium also can make our voice sexier... That is, depending on the criteria for sexiness...

Run the gas through a few different bubblers to filter out any KOH or NaOh, And the gas is absolutely wonderful for your health... not kidding, research Hydrogen For Health!

@@davidprock904 It is a decent anti-oxidant, but the lungs are quite terrible at absorbing it. How do you plan to get the lungs to absorb it well enough to matter?

@@davidprock904 💯 correct. Also look into Browns Gas aka HHO by George Wiseman. He has reversed a lot of disease faster than pure H2.

definitly do it outside rather than inside :D

"We wish you a Merry Christmas We wish you a Merry Christmas We wish you a Merry Christmas And a happy new year Good tidings we bring to you and your kin Good tidings for Christmas And a happy new year"

Blueprint thank you and your family

I used to do this as a kid. It's pretty easy. Get a large open top container full of water and a couple containers that can fit upside down so that their openings are completely submerged (I used milk jugs in a big Tupperware thing). Fill the jugs with water and cap them. Place the jugs upside down into the water and remove the caps so the water in the jugs can mix with the water in the large container. Get a couple electrodes (carbon's best, but I just wrapped aluminum foil around the ends of wires) and stick them up into the jugs. Connect those to a DC power source. Wait a while, as it's pretty slow. And by slow I mean days. Little bubbles will form on the electrodes and then float up to the top of the jugs. If you're using aluminum foil electrodes you'll have to replace them every day or two. One of the jugs (the negative, I believe) will fill faster than the other. That's the hydrogen. The oxygen one fills slower (there's twice as many H2 molecules in the hydrogen one). Once a jug is full, cap it while the opening is still underwater. Don't store the hydrogen for long - it can diffuse through most thin solids over time. Take it outside, hold it upside down, remove the cap, and put a lit splint into the opening. The jug will shoot high into the air and come down nearly spherical. Good way to impress your friends when you're 12, lemme tell you. I just used tap water, which in my home town is conductive enough for this to work. If your water doesn't have enough electrolytes in it, you'll have to add some. You can look up the right ones to use. Just don't use table salt - you'll get chlorine instead of oxygen, and nobody wants that. Anyway, the method shown in this video is much, much faster and probably cheaper considering the cost of the electricity. There's a good reason there aren't hydrolysis plants all over the place producing hydrogen. Unless you have a spare nuclear plant idling away, it's not really cost effective.

@@jeffspaulding9834 Man, you had a childhood! 😀 Thanks for sharing! 😉

Thats too hard for a private person to get their hands on

The salt helps

Yep. One day I'll make a decent electrolysis setup to generate H2, but they are a little complicated...

@@BlueprintScience lies, all lies

@@BlueprintScience Uh good luck with your two emitted gases recombining and wasting all the energy you put into generating them? Also good luck with gases sticking to electrodes and making the setup not work at all. Electrolysis is unfortunately shit, which is why i was so excited for a chemical method this simple.

Well, I did blow it up. So... yeah.

Sounds extremely unlikely to be true. When you have bigger surface area, you have more oxide. Also you have faster reaction, but the Al oxide does not help with getting any more of the product. Unless your wanted product is some complex salt Na[Al(OH)4].

Hydrogen powered transportation is feasible. Still, it is not as efficient as fossil fuels. Also most people aren't interested in carrying pressurized flammable gas around if they can help it.

@@BlueprintScience what do you mean is not as efficient.could you elaborate on scrap aluminum as fuel,it is like $1 per kg here and i can have it unlimited.gallium is $300 per kg not bad either.am i missing something? it supposed to give double mpg compared to gasoline

purist thundewrath, Maybe efficient isn’t the right word. Gasoline is more energy-dense than hydrogen and more manageable too. Hydrogen requires more additional steps to use. For now, gasoline is still the economical choice.

I love how your comments are right on the verge of making sense. Care to explain what "I'd go with beans" even means?

@@BlueprintScience.. Beans, beans, the musical fruit... No?

Do you want to trade parents? Mine are boring. Nah, just kidding. Or am I?

It's way, way slower than this method. I used to run an electrolysis rig as a kid and it took a week or so to make a gallon of hydrogen.

@@jeffspaulding9834 Your power supply didn't have enough amps.

Man, why do you put these ideas in my head. Now I HAVE to do it. Thanks a lot.

oh the humanity

This is how you get suicided by the CIA.

Supervision? SUPERVISION? I'm an adult... and we ALL need supervision! :)

Yea, you know that older guy in the video who explains what we’re doing… he’s a university chemistry/materials professor.

@@BlueprintScience I've now watched your entire video and in my opinion it's misleading. You read out the label on the lye and it states to not come into contact with aluminium but it does not state to not come into contact with aluminium and water which supports my initial post that NaOH reacts with aluminium not water. You also state one can tell it's hydrogen burning due to the red hue but hydrogen can burn with different colours depending upon how it was produced. For example the flame in your video was yellow/orange imo. If you obtained hydrogen from electrolysis using solution of LiOH the flame would be red, reminiscent of lithium. Using the 2-stroke pump only pumped air into the balloon and no oxygen. There is no proof in your video oxygen was pumped into balloons. Imo oxygen gas isn't a constituent of air but manufactured by processing air in its entirety. Finally I'm of the view the hydrogen you produced came from the breakdown of the lye and aluminium metal. The flame colour in the centre certainly indicated the presence of sodium as sodium burns with a yellow flame. You might want to tell your professor chum that I even think Aluminium is not an element but a manufactured metal that contains a high proportion of sodium, carbon and hydrogen and other trace materials. The water decomposes the NaOH and Aluminium metal to release the gas products and the hydrogen does not come from water.

@@PeterPete I’m not personally a chemist, just as a hobby. But I looked back in this video folder for guidance and can tell you this: There are three possible reactions of Aluminum with water, and they are as follows… 2Al + 6 H2O = 2 Al(OH)3 + 3 H2 2Al + 4 H2O = 2 AlO(OH) + 3 H2 2Al + 3 H2O = Al2O3 + 3 H2 When an aqueous solution of lye NaOH is added, the balanced chemical equation becomes… 2Al + 2 NaOH + 2 H2O = Na2Al2O4 + 3 H2 2Al + 6 NaOH + x H2O = Na6Al2O6 + + x H2O + 3 H2 2Al + 2 NaOH + 6 H2O = 2 Na2Al(OH)4+ 3 H2 2 NaAl(OH)4 = 2 NaOH + 2 Al(OH)3 The result of the reactor vessel is extremely impure - thus not suitable for inhalation - which I believe gives the flame its off-color. Several patents exist pertaining to this and similar vessels as well as a US Dept. of Energy document entitled “Reaction of Aluminum with Water to Produce Hydrogen” subtitled “A Study of Issues Related to the Use of Aluminum for On-Board Vehicular Hydrogen Storage” circa 2008 that I referenced to make this video. Hope that helps!

@@BlueprintScience No it doesn't help at all!! Your equations only serve to make you think water is made of hydrogen and oxygen but you cannot prove water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is in the Aluminium and the NaOH. What do you think the H stands for in NaOH? Heat? :/. Imo any water breaks down the aluminium and splits the NaOH into sodium, hydrogen and oxygen. If you cared to actually read Reaction of Aluminum with Water to Produce Hydrogen you will find they use NaOH, NaCl and AlO to help break down the aluminium oxide forming on the metal. They even use water to break down molten aluminium alloys which is more effective at producing hydrogen. The paper does not prove one can solely react aluminium metal with water alone to produce hydrogen as you stated in your video. The colour of a hydrogen flame is derived from the chemicals/metal that is used to produce the hydrogen. Like I've stated before, the hydrogen produced from lithium hydroxide used as an electrolyte in an electrolysis set up will burn red. Lithium burns red. Use calcium carbonate as an electrolyte the hydrogen will burn brick red because the source of the hydrogen - the calcium burns brick red! It's very easy to understand and one does not need to be a chemist to understand the simplicity of it all. The hydrogen you produced from sodium hydroxide/aluminium burned yellow in its centre indicating the burning of sodium. Have you ever burnt water to know what colour flame it produces? No you haven't because you can't burn water!!!

@@BlueprintScience Nice piece of text from that White Paper, page 6..... The reaction thermodynamics shown in Table I indicate that aluminum should spontaneously react with water. However, in practice a piece of aluminum dropped into water will not react under room temperature conditions, or even with boiling water. And yet you stated in your video that aluminium does react with water to produce hydrogen!!!