Super Efficient Graphite Dry Cell Hydrogen Generator 

Double thumbs up. Neoprene gaskets can be substituted with cheap easy to cut pvc shower pan liner that one can buy from a local large hardware store. And pvc holds up exelent to sodium and potasium hydroxides. but pvc does not hold up well to a lot of heat so one needs to use very efficient low 2v or less per cell. Also, one may try various heat dissipation methods. Three more thing to consider. 1) Excessive amps per sq area will make lots of gas bubbles that may aggressively lead to early graphite plate deterioration. One may aim for more plate area with a lower amp per sq area. I dont have an amp per sq area to recomend shooting for. That may require experimentation. 2) gas build up at the top will reduce the plate surface area submerged in electrolyte. If each sq area were thought of as a resistor allowing a certain amount of current, then doubling the area halfs the effective resistance like two resistors in parallel. 3) gas bubbles on the plates and in solution between the plates reduce the effective area through which current can be conducted through the electrolyte. Way to mitigate issues two and three is to circulating electrolyte with a pump pushing gases and electrolyte out of the cells. Maybe orentate the cell to have one corner facing up and the gas discharge hole at the top and an electrolyte refill hole at the bottom corner. Other ideas to I've seen people do and may spark interest. 1) Magnets. I suspect magnetic fields transverse to the flow of current can induce the electrolyte to move move at 90 degrees to both the magnetic field and the direction of current (along the the surface of a plate), and that this electrolyte magnetohydrodynamic flow can help break bubbles free from the surface of the electrodes helping maximize the active electrode surface area. 2) People have used ultrasonic transducers to break bubbles from the surface more quickly. Although, I suspect it may speek breaking down the electrodes. 3) I've seen people use a vacuum pressure to expand the gasses presumably this helps bring the gasses out of solution faster but I'm not sure how much it helps maximizing active plate surface area with expanded bubbles between the plates, and expanded gas does not mean more gas production.

"These things are expensive", oh dear Robert is on a mission to put another industry on its head :-)

Nice, that is a convincing demonstration. You just need to remind people that the gas produced must be used immediately, because in my part of the world there was a guy who put it into a tank then used it to power a brush cutter for maintaining his garden. His death was sudden, very loud and, rather colorful.

"Thank you very much for watching" Sir, of all thing, it is us who are supposed to be grateful for your lesson. Many thanks !

Robert... good to see some of this technology coming back around. Let's hope it's not suppressed by the oil companies again like before. I had a 12 cell pro-built 'dry cell' setup in a rebuilt 1971 VW Beetle. Also had a PWM controlled DC to DC power supply to regulate voltage and current from the battery. Using sodium hydroxide for a catalyst with water, I was producing around 3.5 - 4 LPM of HHO @12 vdc and 18 amps. I had done many road tests with this setup and gained about 8 mpg. consistently at cruising speeds. (The best it would get without HHO was around 30 mpg, but *with* HHO it would do 38 mpg or even more in some cases). Of course you can't produce enough HHO to actually *run* the engine on HHO, but the catalytic effect with regular gas in the combustion chamber made it much more efficient. Unless you can decipher Bob Myers secrets from years ago (RIP), you'll probably never be able to reach those levels. That said, I like your experiments with the graphite 'foil'. The only thing I see that would be a problem over time is the graphite flaking off and deteriorating over time. This might be offset by having it contained in some sort of plastic mesh maybe? Now subbed and will be watching for future developments.😉

Graphite foil.... Absolute genius!!! You may have just solved at least 2 my 'issues' with stainless.

I have worked with making hho cells for the last 10 years now and was in the process of updating to splitting the gasses. I like this and will be building one using grafhite sheets. Thanks

Thank you for your content, Robert. Im almost done building a dry cell with gas separation, hoping to work with urea. The problem I see with doing this efficiently long term is the cost of KOH which is carbonated in this reaction. If you think urea electrolysis is worth while, could you do a video or few covering regenerating the KOH? The two main ways I see are calcining at 1300c or reacting the K2CO3 with HCl yielding KCl, then electrolyzing to get KOH H2 and Cl2 which can be flowed past a UV light and distilled back to HCl. We could use an efficiency comparison. Without regenerating the KOH, the hydrogen produced, through a fuel cell, costs about $17 per kWh. Completely unsustainable.

Science, passion, curiosity, and ingenuity. What's not to love about your videos.

You are the Dread Mad Scientist Robert (yes, yes, I have watched The Princess Bride too many times, I admit it, but mostly when my daughter was young. “You have a wonderful gift for rhyme.” “Yes,Yes, some of the time. “Now quit it!” “Anybody want a peanut?”), and you never cease to amaze! Through the help of an academic nephew I have access to ResearchGate and was about to D/L the article and give it a read. The math and the chemistry are way over my head but I could still follow the article having watched your video. I am so happy to be a part of your community. Thank you again.

The fact that a HHO generator using an aluminium electrode destroys it almost immediately is a clue to a unit designed years ago that used aluminium wire fed into an electrolyte to produce hydrogen on demand for a vehicle engine.

Not sure if its possible or any better or indeed if you could make it would work. Stainless steel mesh coated in graphite ink. Increased surface area a possibility of slowing corrosion. I'm just trying to get you back for making my brain work so hard lol

I wish I'd heard of dry cells 20 years ago when I was toying with graphite anodes and cathodes. Who knows what I would have come up with (although I will get around to making a hydrogen-powered torch one of these days). Anyhow, I've been bombing around your channel all morning after a fortuitous happening on your silica cement video, as I'm working on an UHTC project and am building my own forge for experiment protocols. Your graphene videos, while not super applicable to my present project, have given me some interesting avenues I hadn't thought of in streamlining procedures and alternate ideas!

Very well done. Make sure you have a layer of graphite right next to the metal endplates so they don't oxidize as much.

Robert! You might very well have, inadvertently, stumbled on to yet another source of combustive and abundant energy, because these videos of yours keep blowing my mind! Thanks!

I still enjoy looking back at what I've seen that you make I get something out of everything time cheers mate .

Great work. My last diy kitt was with steel and rubber sealant. I reclaimed the metals from an old pentium computer case. It was for a friends brown-gas burning heater and water heater / stove cabin in the woods. His solar setup was amazing, so there was always a battery bank to rely on/ Your build though, is much nicer than the brutal thing I improvised. Excellent to see.... * It almost seems like the O2 would be a useful side toy to use as a pressurized source. Then a torch could get a kick and get deep into the soldering and micro\macro welding zone of it. There might even be a scuba application if someone was to come up with a backpack sized unit. :) Thank you for sharing this adventure. Keep going, it's a very long rabbit road to many holes of the illusionment. LoL I hope to see more of you along the way.

I remember my first hho generator. It was a wet cell, and used stainless steel bowls with 12v. I didn't use a bubbler for the test and it so exploded when a spark hit it. Good times.

Nice build. I have been looking into this for some time and your build is just what I was looking for. Thank you. Where did your get your graphite? Was it a particular type? Also, was there anything in particular that needed to be done with the copper electrode or was it just sandwiched in the stack? I look forward to your next video.

What a Coincidence! I have about 50 feet of 4 foot wide roll of this Pure Graphite sheet. Very Fragile, looked it up once, it's used for High Heat Gaskets & I heated it Red Hot & no flaking or damage. I'm In!

Rob: What do you want really ? Me: Your hydrogen power cell coupled to your solar cell coupled to your battery on a web shopping cart :-)

It will be interesting to see how the graphite holds up over time compared to stainless steel. What type of water did you use ? Utility, purified drinking water, natural spring water, deionized water, or what. Also did you use any additive ( electrolyte ) like salt, soda, or other chemical. I am very interested in your test results. The applications of this are endless.

Amazing Rob, you’ve done it again! Has anyone ever told you they love you? I ordered the bits from USA for one that fit into a T shaped assembly made from about 2.5 inch waste pipe, the vertical part acting as a reservoir, and built it myself .... quite expensive though. However, adding the HHO to my diesel van air inlet tube, with the power supply sourced from a point that was only switched on when the engine was running, gave me a 15-20% fuel saving, and a quieter and smoother running engine. I would switch the device off when having the van serviced, as the engineers only had a performance map for the diesel only.

Really a pleasure to see the common sense, professionalism and personal delight you bring to these builds.

Well, hell then! Forget the stainless all together. I wonder if there’s a neutral electrolyte, like washing soda that could be nearly as efficient in conjunction with the graphite foil. Even if it was half as efficient, the graphite is so cheap and easy to work with, just make it bigger to make up for the loss in gas production. Thank you for sharing this, you got me interested in building a cell yesterday.

I'd like to see a comparison between the volume of gas output from this compared to the other device, versus input power. I made a dry cell with stainless steel and I agree it was an absolute nightmare! I still have it kicking about, maybe I should revisit it

That's astounding! Thanks for the demonstration of the technique. Well worth experimenting with different surface areas, to see if there's an optimum for that foil.

If you are interested in separating the gases, you can make this same arrangement (but in a single cell) using mesh as your active cathodes and electrodes. Then you use a porous membrane between the mesh electrodes. It would be interesting to see if you could use a graphite or graphite coating on some copper or aluminum mesh.

Super fantastic, thanks for sharing, a great application of common things to achieve space age results. Have a great day to all from Canada!

When you say "I now need to make up a power supply and a bubbler etc for the graphine HHO unit", it leaps out to me actually all you need to do is replace the Stainless tank in the Jewellers welding unit with your new graphine generator. As long as you can get the plumbing to fit, it already has a power supply, a bubbler, the pipe work and of course a nice case, with amp meter, for it all to be portable in. Now that is in line with everything else having only taken 20 minutes to do :)

Hi Rob! Great Work!! a small advice, make the edges of gasket smaller to expose more of the plate's surface area to the water 👍

Magnet? One of your previous videos showed a magnetic field from a regular magnet increase hydrogen production.

Quite cool to see things used for 3D printers (coupling, PTFE tube)

We are heading for a portable HHO generator. Can it power a micro motor for a drone? If this type of tech made electrically powered drones possible, why not internal combustion drones? Thanks for an amazing idea and innovation squared!

Hi Rob, i recon you onto a real winner there. Cheaper, 3x times more efficient and SO easy to build. Nice one haha, good idea.

Hi. Here at h2o-and-evs we build some of the best flooded cells around. In our observations it's the dissolved iron being oxidized that tinges the water yellow. Most water like distilled water can have a lot of dissolved iron in it. Which when it gets oxidized builds up in the cell and/or the reservoir. Also, we have observed no SS degradation even when driven really hard.

What is the thickness of the graphite foil and neoprene gasket material? I'm mostly wondering about the graphite foil, because there are many different thicknesses to choose from. I posted this question on one of your other HHO related videos, but haven't seen a response. I also understand that it's very difficult to track comments from 231 subscribers, so I'm hoping to increase my chances of this being seen by posting the question again. :-)

Brilliant video, you remind me of my old tutor when I was an apprentice instrumentation engineer. FYI you can use magnets to isolate oxygen from hydrogen (I've seen this done in the bubbler, with a wall divider and diffuser with strong N/S pole magnets on each side). Also look at PWM circuits and frequencies in the 2.4KHZ range are reported to excite water molecules and help to break the covalent bonds to produce more gas. Try a 3 phase square wave form invertor, high frequency and experiment from there. I've read it is possible to run 3 separate PWM circuits (standard high wattage LED dimmers for example, cheap and easy to obtain and modify) then use a common neutral and have all three circuits tuned and balanced to the same frequency (oscilloscope and potentiometer to adjust) and each applied to their own electrodes. Electrodes need to be tuned too, if they are precisely manufactured and balanced with one another (mass + ohms resistance) it helps the circuit to reach resonance and maximum HHO production.

He is... Saving the world and he doesn't even realize it.. the silent protector.. the dark knight.

Robert is genuinely highlighting the problem and continuation of companies not innovating and selling lacklustre contraptions. Robert is a genuine free thinker. This may cause problems for him. I wish Rob the best and I can hardly wait for your his next video.😚

Thank you for sharing yourself with the world! You are an excellent teacher and I very much enjoy watching your videos. Keep up the great work!

Thanks Robert, this sheds light on what happend to me making "graphene" out of graphite. I had it all enclosed in a large jar. Went for a swim came back, and it had exploded. Not a small explosion.

Great video! I have an old Kron 300 water torch that hasn't worked in years. I have been wanting to make a more powerful unit for years and after watching your vid I have decided on a dry cell with the graphite foil as you used. I had a few questions though. What thickness of graphite foil did you use? How did you "bury" the copper tab for the end/center plates? Thanks!

That's so cool Rob I use two 11 plate stainless 22 plate in all but the carbon one looks mint and much improvement, you have inspired me to make big improvements great vid.

Hey there Rob, I'm a little late to the party, but I'd just like to add, incase you didn't know,.. potassium hydroxide and de-ionised water makes a great electrolyte, it stays clean for a long time. Also, I'd love to see you use a permeable membrane between anode and cathode, to extract pure hydrogen, which can be stored, unlike hho. Keep up the good work :)

Wonderful build. I too am wondering about how much improvement you would be able to make to this if you used en urea solution for the electrolyte and a magnet for agitation. I was also wondering if pumping the electolyte through the dry cell would increase efficiency. Wonderful video despite making me wonder. Have a nice day.

we are so close to energy independence, thanks

You can use a semi-conductor instead of lye😉 rub 2 pieces of 1000grit wet and dry together and harvest the carborundum by washing off with distilled water.

Wow really cool! I know it has been a while but I am interested to know how long the graphite foil lasted. Even if they didn't last that long it might be worth it when you compare the cost of stainless to the graphite sheets

I am building a cosplay weapon for a graduation present. The kid makes videos, and he wanted something that made a loud noise/flash so it seemed more like a real weapon to the actors. HHO gas is the best I have come up with... You just made my life a lot easier. :)

Rob Rob Rob, you are amazing every single day haha I have learned something new today again

Dad was chief electrician at paper mill , Army Ranger , when younger , daughter is close to electrical engineer , done soon , Son rebuilt helicopters and built wiring harness from small to large planes & helicopters , I just like to learn and experiment , but they do carry my DNA & Genes , and I can build or fix most anything , I Love learning ,

Amazing the knowledge you have!

Thank you Robert. It is very good to see some one I've grown to trust, doing HHO vids. I'm off grid, and in the winter months I supplement my solar with a 12K watt gen running on Gasoline. Would be great if I could produce my own fuel to run the gen set. HHO seems promising. Again, thank you.

Legend..... Legend..... my brain hasn't worked so hard for years

That is brilliant, please continue the build with all its components so that way you can demonstrate it in full operation. Awesome video👍I'm a DiY guy and stuff like this get a me excited.

I would really love to see a video on converting hydrogen and oxygen back into electricity.

design up a template for your laser cutter Rob if you're going to scale it up. Your machine back there should have no problem slicing through your rubber gaskets I would think. Really love that you can just hole punch the foil though.

How thick was your graphene sheet? I bought my through Amazon and it was too thin, .005” What is the ideal thickness for this project? Thank you very much

I just found myself a great channel. Lots of work and interesting content on this topic in particular in the rest of the videos looking by the playlist. Can't wait to watch those. Thank you! I wonder if you find it interesting checking Paul Pantone's GEET generator? I could say it really does clean the smell of the exhaust gasses somewhere near zero. I got mine with minor leaks here and there, and it still worked idling and under load.

Hey Robert, Great job but i have only 1 question. Will the graphite corrode over time and if it does how long will it take? Thanks, epeius

Here is an excerpt from a Stanford paper where they using a negatively charged coating "They layered nickel-iron hydroxide on top of nickel sulfide, which covers a nickel foam core. The nickel foam acts as a conductor - transporting electricity from the power source - and the nickel-iron hydroxide sparks the electrolysis, separating water into oxygen and hydrogen. During electrolysis, the nickel sulfide evolves into a negatively charged layer that protects the anode" I would like to see how these two would compare side by side. Great video. I would like to see a design of the anode and cathode separated in its own compartments not allowing the collecting gasses to mix so not joined at the top - would this allow you to take just the pure H and pure O from each side? Regards.

Depending on the model of the original hho machine, I believe you will find that it will produce around 1L/min of hho gas. If one uses that as your benchmark, it would be very interesting to see what the output of your graphite dry cell is. Further to this, given that a urea solution is able to produce hydrogen at 1/4 the voltage (0.37v instead of 1.27v) this would be an additional step, but an interesting one to explore! Looking forward to seeing what you can do with this!

Just brilliant Robert. Now for a method to store the H2. Next step, extracting it from the storage medium and using the hydrogen to generate electricity through a fuel cell.

how a magnetic field will increase production on your cell ? ( another video from you showed increased production in a magnetic field) keep your good work.

Love your video's because someone somewhere in a really poor country someone has light.

can't wait to see how well this performs. I assume if you build a larger stack, then it would produce more gas but require more power to run ?

Drop your amperage to 5 amps utilized a wave pulse generator to smooth the amperage, sine wave. This will increase the efficiency of the seperation.

hi, your videos are always interesting and inspiring. maybe I am missing something about the connections but it seems to me that it does not produce hydrogen but a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, is that correct? also my doubt about the use of carbon for the electrodes is the possible production of co2 to the positive plate. is it possible in your opinion? thank you

This is an amazing build. I just wonder how one would go about storing hydrogen for later use, like a stove for example.

Great show Rob, my hat goes off to you sir. Stay safe from Australia.

Instead of cutting gaskets, you could use neoprene gasket cement, ''neoprene in a tube''. You would need some material as spacers but that could just be strips of plastic, single or double sided sticky tape maybe, very easy to cut.

I would love to have more on this hho cell

I think this is the study Robert mentions. A Systematic Study on Electrolytic Production of Hydrogen Gas by Using Graphite as Electrode. I read it. Very interesting info. I think however that in the study they used cylinders of hard graphite for electrodes. I wonder whether the flexible graphite would outperform the hard graphite due to more porosity and surface area? But, also, would the flexible underperform the hard in it possibly disintegrating faster? Again maybe due to its porosity. If the flexible is durable enough, great! If not, hard graphite sheets and rods are available on EBay and elsewhere. Blessings!

Awesome, this is good to know. !!! thx again, cheers, Rene

If only i saw this video 6 years ago. Using graphite foil is genius!

Hi, thanks for the video, great stuff. How did you "bury some copper into the foil"? Is that two plates glued together with a copper connector between them? Thanks

You're a genius. Have you heard about the HHO generators they attach to a car and put it through the air intake? Pure hydrogen and oxygen entering the engine binds to the fuel making it more powerful and more efficient.

This method very quickly and very very safely ....

Great job Robert! Can you please tell us the liters of HHO per min and the watts input? Please? So we can easily judge your eff. Please? Also did you do any long term tests? there is much talk of the graphite eroding. PLEASE address both these questions.

Simply Awesome! again, Every day! quick question, what are the specs on the graphite foil? thickness is my biggest question Again Thanks for the consistently amazing content

very cool. How are the plates built? do you take several and stick them together or are the one plate and that's how there bought? Where can I get them?

Don't light up a cigarette.

This is GREAT! Not only cheap and easier, it's also lighter. I would like to suggest to you to look at the homepage WasserStattSprit by Peter Salocher. Unfortunately he speaks german, but german is similar to english. His video about his HHO heater is almost self explaining. What drew my attention to him was how he made a dry cell work as a heater with a catalyst made of platinum o cause the HHO to burn without any flame heating a batch of sand that has been packed into a metal tube. The catalyst must be preheated a little bit to get the reaction going. The best your video is: This version is even affordable for a poor musician like me. Your work made the whole planned project come closer to becoming true. THANKYOU!! Stay beautiful!

Hello Robert, if you think stainless is a bitch to work with try titanium. But supposedly titanium plated with platinum is the best plate material period according to laboratory papers. Since you used graphite plate material instead, what is the materials total name ??? Just graphite or reinforced graphite sheet ??? How about the electrolyte used Sir. What did you use ???? One more thing Rob, what was the efficiency compared to using standard material which is stainless ??? Thanks a bunch Sir and peace to you too. V

Very interesting video. I like it so much. I have a standard dry cell, but that with graphite is truly awesome. Thanks mate.

@Robert Murry-Smith what I've discovered a couple of years ago, when I had 2 neutral cells between each positive and negative electrode is that depending on the electrolyte, it behaved as a battery. It kept some of the voltage and amperage we used for electrolysis. We used stainless steel electrodes. Would it behave the same way with graphite?

Brilliant. That was a huge expression of hydrogen! Great show!!

I knew you could do it. 😋

Ok I am doing something that I never do ..... go complete fanboy. Robert you are the epitome of a DYI guy, like the best ever, close your eyes and listen and there is this older college professor that has a huge amount of knowledge in electrical engineering and he is able to impart that knowledge in a awesomely understandable manner. Open your eyes and you see a normal, everyday bloke with dirty fingers that enjoys actually getting his hands dirty That is a bravissimo standing ovation from me!!!

Crafters who play with vinyl to make t-shirts have machines for cutting the vinyl. (Cricut makes one, but there are other brands too.) They would make cutting the pieces of this an absolute breeze. If a person were going to make many of these cells, using one of these machines might be worthwhile.

Interesting concept, but we need to associate a voltage number to what "super efficient" comparatively means. An HHO stack with stainless steel plates operate typically in the 2-2.5 V per cell. The minimum voltage for any electrolyser is around 1.48V per cell, the so called "thermo-neutral" voltage. A top quality PEM cell with platinum/iridium catalyst can operate at 1.7 V per cell with current density around 0.5 Amp/cm2, the lower the voltage the higher the efficiency. A standard stainless steel plates HHO stack performs very poorly vs PEM, requiring 0.5 to 0.8 V more for the same task. Where does and HHO cell made with graphite plates sits?

Maybe i should have chucked this in,conductive carbon loaded rubber sheet,make two coil plates with plastic speaker grill to isolate and wind like an electrolytic cap. Also carbon filters for water are quite large,i saw someone make salt water batteries using the activated carbon filter inserts,long carbon tubes.

This post is somewhat late but I've just been reviewing your posts in my archive. The project above is brilliant as usual Robert, well explained and demonstrated. That's why I've followed you religiously for many, many years. In respect to the systematic study paper you refer to, graphite, as you said, is indicated as the best overall material for electrolysis electrodes and produces higher gas outputs. May I point out however, but not wishing to offend you, that within the said study paper it does state the following, "With increased electrolyte concentration the hydrogen production is greatly increased. However, the gradual decomposition of anodic graphite rods is observed. From the study we concluded that the high electrolytic concentration (above 0.025 M) is not beneficial for long time hydrogen production." A slight negative for graphite, maybe, but it's not the end for sure, as new materials are no doubt in the pipeline. ( Of course that's if we're ever allowed to witness such.) Kind regards and many thanks for your dedication to open science. John (UK)

Fantastic ROB. Building one this weekend !

Graphite has a huge surface area so it makes sense that it would work well. Also a low resistance means less losses and heat which is a problem in large generators.

Fair play that’s impressive👍 I remember reading a lot about different hydrogen production ideas Stanley Myers apparently had a conversion kit for the standard combustion engine to change the engine to run on hydrogen this reminds me of it it will be interesting to see how efficient this is when you’ve Finely tuned it .... I think Myers might have used a coil of wire around his stainless steel cathodes and drawn an arc of voltage through the coil conductively to change the way the electrons meet against the anode or perhaps plated them in this manner saying that can you plate with graphite 🤔 this is giving me loads of ideas thanks very much for the inspiration 👍coo as 👌 did you ever see the cavity heat pump that guy made worth a look too

What if you put carbide, or a synthetic version that produces a gas when in contact with water, impregnated into the electrode, maybe with an electrolyte. disposable rods with several layers.

I can't remember which is the sacrificial electrode,but one electrode can be stainless the other however (the sacrificial) should be titanium.Also you know uric acid is the best volt per gas volume,though lots of people are using table salt making chlorine gas,potassium hydroxide i think is the best electrolyte. I did see someone use AA battery carbon rods as electrodes.

Hi , thank you for teaching the world a new technic, you are a good teacher, but can you tell us more , can we connect electricity directly to the graphite foil insted of using cupper foils ? If yes it will be so usfull in my hydrogen and oxygen separation cell progect