Make a Zinc Air Battery 

@LechuCzechu i'm not really too worried, this is more for demonstration purposes rather than practical. If others want to make a more practical battery they can simply raise the clips above the electrolyte.

There is no acid in this video

I think all your videos are very educational and very well made

I'm told zinc is also available at home improvement centers. Used along roof peaks to inhibit the growth of moss. I'll be looking into that this spring as I need it desperately.

@Ciscoql i also have a synthesis for hydrazine through a ketazine intermediate, thats organic chemistry.

i dont know much about science and i have no intentions of learning about what you do but i find watching your video clips to be very amazing and very good to watch.just wish i was still in school to try it all haha keep up the good work NurdRage

@98JMA I did not misspoke. The anode is the electrode where molecules are being oxidized and the cathode is the electrode where molecules are being reduced. at the steel wool the oxygen is being reduced to hydroxide and taking in electrons. It is therefore the cathode and the positive terminal. As for your other question, you can, but what would be the reducing agent that gives up electrons?

@hemo1001 The originals poster's question was how to use the battery, not how to charge an ipod. Please pay attention to the context.

@ig33ve If that bothers you, buy a zinc sheet separately.

@safenders connect 7 of these batteries in series and you can charge an ipod.

Thanks!! Yours are the best videos on RU-vid.

you helped me through sophomore chemistry :) my teacher loved your videos

nice work!

Great Video, thank You! .68A short circuit current is quite impressive!

@98JMA I thought you were focusing on the zinc, the steel wool is not a reducing agent, its the catalyst to reduce oxygen, the oxidizing agent in this battery.

@NurdRage Heck yeah!

@DeepThroatBlood666 What if its dead? Btw i got the zinc from another battery because we needed the zinc, not because we wanted to destroy another battery. Buy a zinc sheet separately if getting it from another battery bothers you.

I like that your sign has spots from experiments. Clean lab is a lab not in use. IMHO

Thank you for your sharing useful technical knowledge. Is it rechargeable?

Love these types of videos.

@EmperorAst thanks for telling me, i think i fixed it.

I hated chemistry in college, but your experiments are making all that chemistry that i learned some sense..

I Used filterpaper rather than the paper towel to make the reaction i got around 1.24-1.25 volts which was vey stable for atleast 3 hours. then i diluted the concentration of NaOH to 300ml and then the emf shot up to 1.35 volts. Thanks for the experiment Dr.N Butyl Lithium

basic chemistry explained so well!

@NurdRage Yep, and it's cheap. Rotometals is one source. I just picked up a sheet there which I'll use to fabricate a gravity cell. I'm exploring the possibility of using gravity cells in a practical application. Now that I've seen this demo, I'll definitely make a Zn-Air battery too! And it may even prove more suitable for my application. Thanks, NR!

Thank you for sharing your video. I noticed something needs to be cleared out that it seems there is a lots of confusion around. Cathode is negative electrode while cations are positive ions that migrate to cathode or negative electrode and vise versa for Anode.

brilliant as always!

@BradTheBS all scientists currently working on zinc-air batteries and zinc fuel cells do experiments very similar to this everyday. Obviously with lab-grade equipment and chemicals rather than home stuff.

There is a mistake in reading the amperes : its 0.67 ma not 0.67Amps please look at themulti meter scale

Thank you. You make me want to strive more in Chemistry.

@69iron69 The battery built like this with household materials is not rechargeable. But scientists are working on advanced cells using a combination of alloys and materials to make them rechargeable.

@FusionNinjin can you build a hydrogen fuel cell from household materials?

@SciGuy10 I want to, i really do, but i'm a lot more busy now with my current job and the videos cost more money than they make so i can't make this channel into a job. Eventually i'll have new videos, i just don't know when.

Well done!

Wrote a report on Metal Air batteries for my 3rd year project, last year. They have so much potential, its really to bad that more companies aren't focusing on them for things like electric cars.

@TheGreatIvan There is quite a lot that would work off of this. What you may not know is the voltage from this battery is roughly what you would get from one solar cell. You can either use electronics (search SMPS or switched cap boost) to boost the voltage (and there are plenty of ICs that are more efficient than those options), or you can just make several in series to boost the voltage. That kind of current would easily run most electronics for some time, or a LED flashlight. Thx Nurdrage!

Very fascinating is all I can say.

@3981784 the cathode receives electrons from the external circuit. it's easy to mix things up when you're looking at them from different points of view (e.g. physics vs chemistry).

In the previous video the biggest holdup was the aluminum oxide/insoluble hydroxide. If you get the NaOH sufficiently dilute it might dissolve the oxide of aluminum without attacking water too much, if you can create high enough overpotential, such as with acetylenic additives that hog gassing sites, similar to what's used in acid pickling rust remover additives for HCl, that removes rust from nail without generating hydrogen. Also mercury is a great way to break the oxide layer, but again, that starts auto gassing too, plus it's expensive and toxic, but gallium might be better than mercury. If there were a polar aprotic solvent that dissolved aluminum salts like it dissolves lithium salts in li-ion batteries, perhaps the aluminum could be dipped into that, and separated with a membrane that allows transfer of aluminum ions, but not water. I don't think such membranes exist, as the +3 charge and oxygen bond stregths are too much, but there are such things for sodium, beta-alumina is recently patented. In the Castner-Kellner cell the sodium-mercury amalgam has high enough overpotential for hydrogen generation, that sodium comes out on electrolysis instead of hydrogen, but magnesium does not work because the magnesium-mercury amalgam does not bind as strongly as the sodium-mercury one. I don't know about aluminum. Part of the problem of trying to get high hydrogen gassing overpotential out of aluminum-mercury or aluminum-gallium is that most commercial aluminum is alloyed with some copper, and magnesium, and the copper sets up a local battery, and the magnesium is really reactive with water. Things might be different with absolutely pure aluminum. Also, in the past even zinc based batteries used to contain mercury, for similar reasons.

@bakonfreek You might consider saving to buy one. For around the cost of a top end calculator, you can get a Fluke or BK meter that will last a lifetime and will likely see more use in the long run than said calculator. As for blowing fuses. You really should have a bit of idea what range the measurements are going to fall in before hooking a meter up in the first place.

your are awesome dude.....but I was wondering if using some type of bronze or copper would be better for either batter set up? and if not either, then is there a battery that can use copper or bronze like the zinc or aluminium.

Any chance of showing a recharable please. Nice work.

Superb demonstration (as is usual) ;-)

I'm going to miss these videos...

can i use graphite kathodes instead of stealwool? that konserves space and i can make them into a nice grid. also do you think that if i put a cap over the output i can store energy for later so the mA gets a bit higher. i'm having an ambitions plan to make a zink-air camping lantarn.

That's some pretty good current there compared to the last one! :O

@TheGreatIvan The point is not to make a use full battery. The video is more about the science behind it and the experimentation.

@HE3991 Think of it as salvaging. If that battery is dead and you can use the inside and outside for two different things you just did something good.

This is very interesting... Question: what would happen if you galvanized a magnet? Would that increse its magnetic pull or would you have your very own battery?

I'd love to see you make a fuel cell. I think that would be cool. Even more interesting if you could do it with alcohol or other non-hydrogen gas method. I've seen these discussed but I'm really curious what you could come up with using home chemistry.

Great to that sort of thing thank you for posting keep up the great work take care stay safe : )

Super! Thank you very much!

Actually zinc is also amphoteric , it does react with NaOH

Hi, I realy like your video. Can you please help me with few related questions? Is there a process to separate and recycle the products Na2Zn(OH)4 and 2OH? Would it be possible to use different electrolite to have overal reaction 2Zn + O2 → 2ZnO? Will the following reaction Zn + 2 H2O + 2 NaOH → Na2Zn(OH)4 + H2 occuring as well? Thank you, Jarda

how would a Vanadium Air Battery work? great video. thx

@ArtistBlade1972 Don't know of a spec, but see section 4.2.6. As you would expect, the output just goes though the resistor divider, so startup voltage shouldn't be affected by output. I could see it changing the time for startup, but not much. Anyway, the point is that its cheap and easy to turn low voltage things like this into good sources of power.

@dan313111 yes its a magnet with a wich reacts to the induction coil in his heater..... it spins continuously so you dont have too! :)

have you tried using activated carbon instead of steel wool as the cathode? activated carbon has a much larger surface area than steel wool for air to contact.

sweet vids keep up the good work!

@someguy1x go for it

@iroq5550 No you can't, that's not a hydrogen fuel cell.

My question is what might this be useful for? For example can I fully charge an ipod with this? How long will this put electricity before the reaction is completely used up?

Ah yes... Love this classic 😊

very good video, which battery would you buy for a car conversion project?

@Livingreciever its a magnet... he explains in one of his videos... but i cant remember which one

@freakqnc Probably yes . . .although it (may) be cheaper to react an acid with a metal instead.

@JohnKapsis1985 The zinc is probably the limiting factor since there is plenty of air. As you pull electrons out, the metal will dissolve into the sodium hydroxide (per the formula he showed on the video). Pull out too many electrons, metal is gone - it will probably lose the alligator clip connection (due to metal weakening) long before it all dissolves. Still, if you don't pull much current, it should last a long time. Look up the relationship between coulombs, moles of electrons, and amps

@EMDSD40LocoDash2 I might add, the huge surface area of the steel wool is probably much more than adequate for the task. To deliver more current, I suspect more zinc (or a form with with greater surface area) and/or a freer flow of oxygen would be the best approach.

@NurdRage That would be awesome!

@safenders Or use a power converter circuit to trade some of that amperage for voltage. A proper boost converter would do it, I think.

I'm completely fine with that, I qas talking about the relationship between acids and water.

Could you put a bunch in parallel to make higher current? Is it rechargeable?

What happens if you put it in pure Oxigen will it produce more current and than ignite or will it stay cool and produce higher current?

If you put a layer of manganese dioxide in-between the separator you would get higher voltage right???

@jeriellsworth I've gone through dozens and dozens of signs. Maybe someday i'll assemble a blooper video where i show the various gruesome (and often flaming) deaths of my various signs.

@NurdRage weren't scientist trying to improve the lead battery (2v/cell car battery) by using nano tubes and fill them whit lead. and they said that it would recharge like a capacitor and it could hold more power

@98JMA Look at the reactivity series. Just below zinc is chromium. That would probably work (at a guess), but it's far far more expensive than zinc. Next down is iron, which is already in use as the catalyst/anode. I don't see how the cell could work with the same metal as both anode and cathode. All the ions would have the same charge. Zinc is simply ideal. It's highly reactive, low cost, utterly practical.

Is it temperature sensitive???

Great video man. can u do the "Paper battery" experiment video?

thank you

@taeke18 W is unequal Wh! 5.18Wh means the battery can deliver 5.18W for one hour until it's completely depleted, that would be a current of approx 1.4A (at 3.7V voltage). But still you would need quite a lot of these selfmade batteries, cell phones usually need at least 3.5V-3.7V to power on.

@pkrska And your current is....?

The battery you made in this video is it capable of powering an HTC phone for example HTC sensation

@oOoxelAoOo I don't know, people expect me to easily make practical and useful cells from household materials. I can meet some but I can't meet all those requirements.

258 likes, and not a single dislike!! Which is exactly why science kicks asss

really cool video, why are they called air batteries?

What about covering a saltwater magnesium air battery? What would be a way for it to be cheap, and prevent hydrogen production, making it an effective fuel cell?

@tashona123 Fair enough . . .anyway, an electrolyte is simply a solution that will conduct electricity, so the electrolytes in the drink are probably for the wellbeing of your heart or something.

I was wandering if I could use KOH instead of NaOH as electrolyte?

is there any plans on how to make sodium or potassium metal?

@Ciscoql my "make TCPO" video is organic chemistry.

so is this battery useful for a survival situation IE Nuclear bomb shelter, put a few of the dry cells in there until needed? are they powerful enough to charge something for example an IPod or electric shaver

can you please do a video showing how to make a decent capacitor?

can you use salt water as the electrolyte like in the aluminum air cell battery?

That is a strong NaOH mix, over 8 M, I think. Does it have to be that strong?

Dear, how much time the quantity of liquid you have used let teh battery got active for a stable output power? Thanks,

That's awesome

can i use homemade lye water distilled to mineral form?

Your videos make me want to pursue a career in chemistry.

whats the little metal thing in the beaker when heating stuff up?? its spinning.