make a heater with iron- what do you think?

[chilled_fluorine]

I was thinking about galvanic corrosion recently, and I got an idea. If you can increase the reacting surface area of a piece of iron by many times, you should be able to make it corrode very quickly, maybe even enough to boil water. You could start out with copper foil, or a foil of any metal lower than iron on the reactivity series. Get some trash cans or other large containers. Some copper wire, rubber tubing, gravel, water, and optionally salt will be needed as well. Cut out a lot (I'm really not exactly sure) of sheets of copper foil that will fit into your container. Take one sheet, and place it flat on the bottom of the container. Take a small handful of clean gravel, and place it on the middle of the foil sheet, then try to spread it evenly across it. Do not use too much gravel! Take a small piece of copper wire, just longer than the gravel layer is thick, and attach it to the foil. No soldering. Tie it on, get creative. Put another layer of foil on top of the gravel. Attach the wire to the second sheet, so both sheets are connected. Do everything you did for the last layer. Keep it up until the can is full. Once you reach the top, add an extra long piece of wire to the exposed foil, maybe 2 or 3 meters. Fill the whole thing up with water. The salt will make corrosion much faster, so if you have that, add enough to make at least a 5% solution. The more the merrier, right? Get a small, .5-1 liter container, and fill it up with some of your saltwater. Keep it level in height with the top of the trash can, Very Important. Use the rubber tubing to connect the two containers. Make sure that the tube fills with water, this will allow ions to flow in the solution. Take any piece of iron, pure is better, but steel will work. Avoid galvanized and stainless. The smaller the piece is, the more concentrated the heat will be, don't use anything too big. Hook the iron up to the long wire, and stick it in the second container.Corrosion should begin almost immediately. Add some vinegar if you want. You could wire up multiple cells to make things faster. Here is an idea/diagramI know, it looks like it was drawn by a kindergartener. But I did it in paint, and I'm tired.Tell me what you think, if you try it tell me how it works for you.

[chilled_fluorine]

Wow, I just rated myself 1 star while trying to post a new topic. I'm such a noob.

[chilled_fluorine]

Wow, I just rated myself 1 star while trying to post a new topic. I'm such a noob.

 

This is sort of random, but do you think the Feds would let us try this with the statue of liberty? LOL

[chilled_fluorine]

This is sort of random, but do you think the Feds would let us try this with the statue of liberty? LOL

 

I'm going to assume that because nobody has responded, everyone thinks this is a stupid idea, right?I did have some success. With a smaller scale version of this and a little bit of 2% hcl I managed to get the solution to about 50 degrees (yes, Celsius, Fahrenheit would have sucked). Wow! I just realized how expensive copper foil is at retail. I was given a big roll a while ago, I'm going to use it much more sparingly now.