Electrolyzer help

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[Bob Boyce]

[kd7twf]

[Bob Boyce]

Salt eats stainless steel for lunch is one reason. The other is if you do get it working, you may kill yourself with the chlorine gas that it releases. Red Devil lye is NaOH, and is one of the preferred electrolytes because it is catalytic in nature, and is not consumed during the reaction like salt is. Eventually your salt would decay into NaOH, after all of the chlorine is released, and your plates are eaten up and pitted.

In short, straight AC will not produce electrolysis. It just heats the water through resistive heating (I*R losses, usually just called IR losses) and does not make gas other than heat produced water vapor. The rapid reversal of polarity causes any generated anions and cations to just sway to and fro in solution and not go anywhere.

The sizzling you hear is the salt water pretty much arcing from the plates, past the nylon washers, and to the bolts. That type of construction just does not work well for series cells. My first attempts at series cells were like that, so I learned early on. Even with rectified DC, the IR losses due to the arcing is much greater than the current that would normally flow through the cells. In simple terms, it's shorting out from end to end.

Bob

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