What's an easy way to measure the production of hydrogen and oxygen during electrolysis? Sal2

sal · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 246

Greets, All

What's an easy way to measure the production of hydrogen and oxygen during
electrolysis? Sal2

What's an easy way to measure the production of hydrogen and oxygen during
electrolysis. I have labview 7.1 and a DAQ card by NI insturments (usb-
6008). I don't have to use these at all but it would make life easy to
have the data collected automaticlly by computer. I'm willing to start
from scratch to by new equipment but I'm not sure what equipment to
purchase.

Does anyone have a list of things I need:

1) What I need to purchase to record the production of hydrogen and oxygen
over time via a computer during electrolysis.
2) I have a limited budget.

TIA
Sal2

Bevan Price · science forum beginner Joined: 09 May 2005 Posts: 8

"sal" <sal@spp.net> wrote in message
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<salmonegg@sbcglobal.n · science forum beginner Joined: 13 Sep 2005 Posts: 28

On 10/25/05 11:03 AM, in article Xns96FA90FABCE5Fsalsppnet@140.99.99.130,
"sal" <sal@spp.net> wrote:

Craig · science forum beginner Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 23

Perhaps the easiest way is to simply measure the volume of the gases as
they are produced.

A school I was at used to have a demonstration setup which basically
amounted to two inverted buret tubes joined with another tube (an H
configuration). I think the electrodes were each under one of the
glass tubes. Fill the assembly with water, turn on the electricity,
and watch the bubbles of gas slowly collect. If you use marked burets,
you can measure the volume of gas while recording the time on a
stopwatch. The whole assembly is sitting in a bucket of water, open to
air, so the pressure of the gas, which displaces some of the water, is
ambient.

If you really want to use the computer, perhaps you could find a way
for it to measure the current, both instantaneously and integrated over
time. Trying to include an electric eye to "watch" the water level in
the glass tubes is probably more trouble than it is worth.

<HLS@nospam.nix> · science forum addict Joined: 25 Oct 2005 Posts: 90

At the risk of entering a quagmire, why do you want to be able to do this?
It might make the answer more applicable.

How much money do you have to spend?

N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc) · science forum Guru Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 2835

Dear sal:

"sal" <sal@spp.net> wrote in message
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Borek · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 157

hhc314@yahoo.com · science forum addict Joined: 18 Sep 2005 Posts: 90

If you have advanced beyond the stage of using water displacment gas
collection bottles, were it me I'd start out with the following basics:

a. A digital atmospheric pressure sensor.
b. A digital gas flow sensor for the hydrogen.
c. A digital gas flow sensor for the oxygen.
d. Suitable digital sensor interface cards for the particular computer
you are using.(Keithley/MetraByte makes a good variety of these
suitable for use with a PC having an adequate number of PCI, ISA
or PCMCIA slots -- along with the software
drivers required to make them function.)

The supervisory software is not critical and even Labview might be
adaptable. You could even write your own application using GW Basic,
Visual Basic, or Visual C++.

Still, it will require considerable calibration and effort to not only
make the whole thing "play" correctly, but also for it to provide you
with accurate, precision results. Still, this is the type of
instrumentation used by professional researchers.

For the amateur experimentor, I would suggest that a possible solution
would be to employ separate hydrogen and oxygen collection vessels and
count the number of times that each needs to be emptied during a
specific time interval. This would give you a quantitative measure of
individual gas production rates, which from your post is what I believe
you are looking for. This may be the simplies and lowest expense
approach to fulfilling your goals.

One final thought is that a clever person could simply attach ordinary
commercial gas meters with digital readouts to separately measure the
production of hydogen and oxygen, and collect/process their readings
over time using an interfaced computer. This could be a viable approach
if your electrolysis equipment produces sufficient volumes of gas.

Hope this helps. Harry C.

Attila the Bum · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 251

Buy an inexpensive ammeter.

You can split water with a 9-volt
radio battery in the milli- to micro-
amp range, I'm guessing. Use two
or more batteries in series if you
need more voltage to get a measurable
current, or buy a better ammeter.

Place it in-line with one or the
other electrode. Record the
current periodically for some
reasonable length of time until
a noticable chance in the volume
of your (I presume) water
occurs.

Now you have two ways to calculate
the amount of gases produced over
a set period of time: (1) by the volume
of water consumed; and, (2) by the
number of electrons participating in
the reaction.

Be sure you have the air temperature
and barometric pressure for your calculations.

Atty (... to what accuracy; the big
boys were cooking at about
5% in those early days. The
history books/journals should
have the set-ups they used. Smile

sal · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 246

Thank you!!!

hhc314@yahoo.com wrote in news:1130353316.248934.164930
@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Attila the Bum · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 251

I thought I had answered this
the other day. You get the
short answer this time.

Find a used DMM and salvage
the meter itself. It's an ammeter.
Calibrate it with a battery and
resistors from Radio Shack.

Stick the meter in-line with
one or the other of your
electrodes.

Write down the current flow
periodically from time to time
for a length of time long enough
to decrease the amount of water
(assumed) used in the experi-
ment.

You now have two ways to cal-
culate the amount of gas e-
volved at the two 'trodes. If
they agree within, say, 10%,
you've got publishable data
(but who cares; you ought to
check the historic literature
for a clue as to how the big
boys did it at the dawn of
what we call "chemistry" :-)

Atty (Greetings, victims of marketing Smile

nagy@anl.gov · science forum beginner Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 16

Greetings:

There are some websites dealing with laboratory experiments on water
electrolysis:

http://www.chem.uiuc.edu/clcwebsite/elec.html

http://chemlearn.chem.indiana.edu/demos/electropl.htm

These were found in the Electrochemical Science and
Technology Information Resource (ESTIR).

http://electrochem.cwru.edu/estir/

Good luck; zn

sal · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 246

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oxazoline · science forum beginner Joined: 28 Oct 2005 Posts: 4

can't you do it visually?
If not, I'd put a transducer under an inverted graduate-callibrate the
transducer visually and set the recorder up accordingly
if this is a major oversimplification of the issue please explain with
a little more detail

sal · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 246

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