Does hydrogen solidify?

[Popcorn Sutton]

I'm trying to extract the oxygen from water and get solidified hydrogen. How can I go about doing this?

[John Cuthber]

You need to decompose the water to get oxygen and hydrogen. that's not too difficult
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis

Then you need to cool the hydrogen until it freezes (at about -259C) which isn't easy unless you happen to have a supply of liquid helium.

Why did you want to do this?

You need to decompose the water to get oxygen and hydrogen. that's not too difficult

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis

 

Then you need to cool the hydrogen until it freezes (at about -259C) which isn't easy unless you happen to have a supply of liquid helium.

 

Why did you want to do this?

[Popcorn Sutton]

Thanks John, I thought it would involve freezing the hydrogen which I was hoping to avoid. Maybe we can come up with a different solution. The idea was to take water, separate the oxygen from it, and actually just mix the hydrogen with more water so we can have a combustible water to fill our gas tanks with. I hear that hydrogen is VERY explosive though. I just made an agreement with my parents to allow me to use the basement as my laboratory, so I'm excited to get to work. There's a few projects that I'm going to be working on and I look forward to collaborating with you guys

[swansont]

What would be the point of the water? Just a transport mechanism?

[Popcorn Sutton]

Yea solely for transport.

 

And if it works i'd like to determine a way to focus the combustion to a point.

[swansont]

Hydrogen internal combustion engines have existed for a while; IIRC you can easily modify a gasoline engine — the timing is different, and you add a little water to keep the temperature down to avoid some nasty byproducts. Metal hydrides are used for H₂ storage.

[Popcorn Sutton]

So wait. I intend on using a UV light to separate the h and o, I don't want to use liquid helium to solidify the hydrogen and I don't want any oxygen in my solidified hydrogen. How do I avoid oxygen contamination and is there another method to solidify hydrogen? Maybe there is a chemical I can introduce that the hydrogen will bond to in a solidified form and retain its combustibility?

 

I don't want to modify my car at all, I want the process to be cheap and the product to be the closest thing to free as possible. Hydrogen engines are WAY too expensive and provide no hope for the immediate future.

[imatfaal]

You will use more energy splitting the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen than will be possibly be gained by combusting the Hydrogen at a later time.

 

I presume you intend to use solar radiation as your UV source (otherwise there will be no possible cost or green saving). With the sun directly overhead and no interference a square meter gets about 32 watts of UV - ie 32 joules per second. A litre of petrol has in the order of ~32 million joules worth of energy (useable or not) - so that's a square metre for million seconds of unobstructed tropical sunshine per litre of petrol - at 100% efficiency which one could never even get close to. FYG the USA gets through ~10^9 litres of petrol a day.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I have access to UV lights, I was thinking about making a cubic rig and maybe increasing the intensity of the light in some way. It seems like you are suggesting that in order to get combustible hydrogen, you need to put in a lot of energy. I don't mind using electricity, the lights are small. What would it take to get a gram of solidified hydrogen and what would I need to solidify it besides freezing it with liquid helium?

 

I'm also going to need to spend some time defining the terms you used in the previous post as well as learning the metrics. If you could help alleviate me from that effort I'd appreciate it but I don't expect it.

[imatfaal]

I have access to UV lights, I was thinking about making a cubic rig and maybe increasing the intensity of the light in some way. It seems like you are suggesting that in order to get combustible hydrogen, you need to put in a lot of energy. I don't mind using electricity, the lights are small. What would it take to get a gram of solidified hydrogen and what would I need to solidify it besides freezing it with liquid helium?

 

I'm also going to need to spend some time defining the terms you used in the previous post as well as learning the metrics. If you could help alleviate me from that effort I'd appreciate it but I don't expect it.

 

The main thing to learn is that you do not get more energy out than you put in! Never! Never ever!

 

The reason we use hydrocarbons is that the world has already put years and years worth of energy into it already - we just need to find it lying around and use it. however, f you are using electricity from the grid - then you have to pay for it; the cheapest way of buying energy is not using electricity from the mains to split water to recombust in an engine. You would be better off researching a more pressing problem - ie what we need to do is learn how to use less energy.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Hydrocarbons are solid? Could I introduce carbon to water, let it soak, and pull out pure hydrocarbon in a solidified state? Is that divisible and combustible? How would I avoid oxygen contamination?

 

Are hydrocarbons magnetic? Are they sensitive to static electricity?

 

You will use more energy splitting the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen than will be possibly be gained by combusting the Hydrogen at a later time.

 

I presume you intend to use solar radiation as your UV source (otherwise there will be no possible cost or green saving). With the sun directly overhead and no interference a square meter gets about 32 watts of UV - ie 32 joules per second. A litre of petrol has in the order of ~32 million joules worth of energy (useable or not) - so that's a square metre for million seconds of unobstructed tropical sunshine per litre of petrol - at 100% efficiency which one could never even get close to. FYG the USA gets through ~10^9 litres of petrol a day.

Omg I just broke that down and understood it. Heres my plan. I'm going to buy a custom made vaccuum attachment that has needles with an end that has an opening a nanomicron larger than the diameter of an oxygen/hydrogen atom. I'm probably going to make it oscillate between suck and blow as fast as possible with the suck mode just barely longer than the blow mode so they don't get clogged. Edited May 17, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[John Cuthber]

"Could I introduce carbon to water, let it soak, and pull out pure hydrocarbon in a solidified state?"

No.

[swansont]

Heres my plan. I'm going to buy a custom made vaccuum attachment that has needles with an end that has an opening a nanomicron larger than the diameter of an oxygen/hydrogen atom.

 

No you're not.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Please don't use this method on fresh water unless we can use it to also make fresh water.

[John Cuthber]

What method?

[Popcorn Sutton]

See previous post

[SamBridge]

Hydrogen freezes? It doesn't have to go into a state of degeneracy to become a solid? I've only seen liquid hydrogen at most, it takes miles and miles of pressure of Jupiter's atmosphere to make hydrogen a solid.

Edited May 22, 2013 by SamBridge

[John Cuthber]

If it's cold enough then atmospheric pressure is enough to get it to freeze (at about -259C).

[Popcorn Sutton]

You don't even need to freeze it, you just need to separate it from the oxygen and use it to enrich more water so you can control it's combustibility. H3o, h4o, h5o, each being more combustible than the previous.

[John Cuthber]

You don't even need to freeze it, you just need to separate it from the oxygen and use it to enrich more water so you can control it's combustibility. H3o, h4o, h5o, each being more combustible than the previous.

Nope.

Do you realise that there's a difference between chemistry and wishful thinking?

[Popcorn Sutton]

Wishing works. That is the business I am in.

[Bignose]

Wishing works. That is the business I am in.

This is not a wishing forum. It is a science forum. If you are going to espouse nothing but wishing, I, for one, would appreciate it if you took it to a different forum.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I'm not making wishes, and wishing doesnt currently work, but logic will take us to that point eventually. I'll leave that be though

[Bignose]

Wishing works. That is the business I am in.

I'm not making wishes

Self contradictory much? Within a span of 83 minutes, you made statements that are almost complete opposites. I just don't understand.

[SamBridge]

What he's saying is that because of the economy, people are not wishing as much and therefore his job as a...wish monitor, has taken a pay cut which reduces the amount of time he can spend logically thinking as he needs another job.

Edited May 23, 2013 by SamBridge