Good day. I've been trying to make a good electrolysis kit for various experiments but I have a terrible yield.

I used two lead electrodes (also tried graphite rods but they wear out fast) each about 1 cm in diameter submerged 7cm under the water fairly close to eachother, connected to a 12v 10a DC power supply in a glass jar.

I've tested it on salt but found my setup only splits 0.5g per hour (ran it for a few hours), pointless for harvesting decent amounts of metal, etc. I seem to have gotten similar amounts with both types of electrode.

What could I be doing wrong? Do I need bigger electrodes? I've seen claims I should be able to split several grams per hour, but one of those results was from google Gemini so I'm taking it with a pinch of salt (C'mon you gotta admit that was funny right? No? OK I'm sorry).

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

The question is what do you want to electrolyse? What is your aim?

If you electrolyse salt NaCl then the Chloride will get a precipitate on the Lead as PbCl2, this decrease the yield down to Zero.

Lead electrodes are only good in a car battery.

You need inert electrodes. Copper bars coated with gold. Or platinum, Iridium or Ruthenium electrodes. It's a matter of money.

Graphit is also a good choice, but will be consumed.

Then the conductivity of your electrolyte has an impact. Concentration is a key factor.

Surface of the electrodes! Influence of current density. Cathode small, Anode big.

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