Oxygen creation using electrolysis

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

TTPaws

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Divemaster
Messages
452
Reaction score
181
Location
St. Croix, USVI
# of dives
1000 - 2499
I was going down a rabbit hole the other day and watched some youtube videos regarding making your own H & O2 using electrolysis. In the past I always understood that the drawback to making O2 was the power consumption, but with a solar power system power the power supply the cost should drop to nominal. With the setup in the he showed in the video, he was making (rough calculation) 4 liters per hour at 1 ATM. So I'm wondering how far you would have to scale this up to make it feasible?

Anyone done this?
 
To continuous blend a typical nitrox mix on a home compressor that give 5 cu.ft. minute you would need to scale it up by a factor of 200 times or more. Maybe not the most practical way.

That would create a lot of hydrogen that would need to be vented safely if you did not want to blow up the house.
 
Must be very pure water too.

Lots of power required:
In general, it takes about 50 kiloWatt hours of energy to electrolyze 9 kilograms (also 9 liters) of water to produce 1 kg of hydrogen (H2) and 8 kg of oxygen (O2).
 
Helium?
Or do you mean hydrogen?
You don't want to mix hydrogen into the oxygen,,,, then run it into a compressor,,,,,,
KAAAABOOM,
but anything is doable,,
Think linking a few oxygen concentrators together be alot easier, at 95%ish

Unless you need pure O2...
 
Helium?
Or do you mean hydrogen?
You don't want to mix hydrogen into the oxygen,,,, then run it into a compressor,,,,,,
KAAAABOOM,
but anything is doable,,
Think linking a few oxygen concentrators together be alot easier, at 95%ish

Unless you need pure O2...
I changed it to Hydrogen, thank you :rofl3:

Since I'll be using the O2 for my rebreather, I am still concerned with the amount of argon using a concentrators, I was looking for a way to create 99.9.

@grf88 I won't be running it into my compressor, but thinking of a way to bank it for filling my RB tanks.
 
Since I'll be using the O2 for my rebreather, I am still concerned with the amount of argon using a concentrators, I was looking for a way to create 99.9.
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.
 
Id be worried about what other gasses end up in there as a result of the electrode breaking down etc.
My understanding is that it may contaminate the water, but not the output gasses, although I haven't seen anything that talks about the electrodes breaking down. There are a lot of commercial operations that do it this way, so I wonder what they use to prevent contamination.
 
My understanding is that it may contaminate the water, but not the output gasses, although I haven't seen anything that talks about the electrodes breaking down. There are a lot of commercial operations that do it this way, so I wonder what they use to prevent contamination.
What commercial operations do it that way?
 
What commercial operations do it that way?
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
 

Back
Top Bottom