I was bored so me and my friend made a hydrogen generator for fun and because we are both into chemistry. We mixed water with some table salt and added aluminum foil as the anode and cathode because my friend has seen it done before. We plugged it in to a 12v 850mah adapter and it ran for 5-8 seconds in the ventilated garage until I unplugged it, walked inside and dumped it down the drain. I remembered that table salt had chlorine attached to it so I didn't want chlorine gas to be produced. Did it produce chlorine gas? This was not on purpose but accidental. Did that 5-8 seconds do much damage? We both feel fine and had no shortness of breath or anything and we were a couple of feet away from it when it started running. Will we both be ok? I mean it can't be as bad as when I helped get kids away from a burning car and me inhaling all the burning rubber and plastic.

Edited June 21, 201312 yr by chrisrocks17

"Did that 5-8 seconds do much damage?"

No.

For a start, electrolysis of salt water is as likely to produce oxygen as chlorine.

There's also a good chance that whichever gas was produced, some of it will have reacted with the aluminium.

At 850mA for 8 seconds, at most 68 Coulombs of charge will have been transferred.

That's enough to make (at most) 0.0007 moles of chlorine atoms or 0.00035 moles of chlorine

That's about 8 ml of gas.

Diluted into a garage- I'm guessing it's bigger than about 2.5 by 3 by 2 metres or 15 cubic metres that would give about 0.5 part per million of chlorine (by volume).

The limit for people working is 0.5 ppm for 15 mins, and you weren't exposed for that long

Edited June 21, 201312 yr by John Cuthber

And you'd have noticed very distinctly if you were inhaling chlorine, well before a dangerous brief concentration. Yuk, cough.

I'd guess you got H₂, O₂, and AlCl₃ + NaCl in solution.