Oxygen creation using electrolysis

[BRT]

For one the US Navy, and probably every nations navy. But the companies seem more concerned with retrieving the Hydrogen then the O2, but either way you'll get the O2.

Edit: added link

Thanks for the links. I still wonder if any commercial operations are producing either oxygen or hydrogen in this method. The navy can do it any way they want. They have the budget. But I suspect that almost no commercial O2 suppliers are using electrolysis. Wikipedia says 4% of hydrogen comes from electrolysis.

 

[broncobowsher]

Nuclear sub, electrolysis makes sense.

When I was a kid, friend was going to do some electrolysis. Clear water doesn't conduct that well. Put some salt in. We started making chlorine gas.

These days I just buy bottles of O2 from the gas supplier.

 

[Gone for diving]

Could always freeze the 95%o2 and let the argon vent off
We are trying to save money, right???

 

[Wibble]

Obviously on a nuclear submarine, extracting oxygen is rather critical to its whole raison d'etre - there's no shortage of power nor money.

Currently the world's hunting down energy sources to replace hydrocarbons. Electrolysis must form the backbone of this given the presence of non-combustible hydrogen in the form of water. Thus a lot of research should be going on to improve the viability of commercially extracting hydrogen from sea water using solar or wind power. Maybe the by-product of this will be oxygen. More supply means cheaper

 

[broncobowsher]

Trouble with electrolysis is it ends up concentrating Deuterium. You end up with heavy water which is ranked as nuclear waste. Our local nuclear plant was recently sited for high Deuterium in the discharge water. Nevermind that it is naturally occuring, it still freaks people out if there is any concentration of it. Think about the Grand canyon incident. Someone took a bucket and collected some Uranium ore samples (rocks laying out on the ground). After years of sitting in the museum someone realized it had some background radiation and probably shouldn't be stored in the museum. So they took the rocks outside and poured them on the ground. But it was radioactive, you can't just go pouring the rocks on the ground, they have to be disposed of in an approved nuclear waste facility! For a handful of rocks that were picked up off the ground. Those rocks made the news for weeks and were just a handful of natural rocks. Not concentrated heavy water left over from electrolysis. Start making that in mass and see how much the green energy people freak out.

 

[KristofferWickstrom]

Argon has been removed with PSA oxygen concentrators that are fitted with carbon molecular sieves (I think 3A) in addition to the standard zeolite.

One *potential* problem worth looking into with homemade electrolysis cells (using the stainless steel anode and cathode) is the production of trace amounts of hexavalent chromium.

Your electrolysis cell would ideally be built with a separation membrane between the anode and cathode with separate gas vents so the hydrogen and oxygen do not mix.

I recall one situation that had a fatal outcome when some experimenters had a non separated electrolysis cell running under pressure and the mix of oxyhydrogen auto ignited.

 

[TTPaws]

Argon has been removed with PSA oxygen concentrators that are fitted with carbon molecular sieves (I think 3A) in addition to the standard zeolite.

One *potential* problem worth looking into with homemade electrolysis cells (using the stainless steel anode and cathode) is the production of trace amounts of hexavalent chromium.

Your electrolysis cell would ideally be built with a separation membrane between the anode and cathode with separate gas vents so the hydrogen and oxygen do not mix.

I recall one situation that had a fatal outcome when some experimenters had a non separated electrolysis cell running under pressure and the mix of oxyhydrogen auto ignited.

I've seen the youtube videos where they were playing with oxyhydrogen and I would definitely look at keeping them separate. I think I'll do some more searching on how to get the argon out of the concetrator's output.

 

[broncobowsher]

I remember seeing an article that stated a zeolite to remove the Argon. But it costs 10x as much as the one that does the nitrogen. Considering the intended purpose of the oxygen concentrator, the expense is not justified. Thus you don't find them. It is only those of us who are repurposing used medical equipment that want such a feature. The concentrators are not being built for the secondary market.

 

[TTPaws]

So would someone, maybe @tbone1004 or someone else that uses the concentrator explain their setups?

I can't imagine they put out much pressure.

 

[rjack321]

Man, no way to do this easy. O2 concentrator produce mix of relatively 95% O2 and 5% Ar. Ar AFAIK is treated as 3 more times narcotic potential than nitrogen.

Just do a dil flush periodically, the 5% argon leftover in O2 via PSA is not a huge deal for most CCR diving.