| Author | Message | ||
     Anonymous |
I remember once when I was a kid one of my neighbors made "helium" (or some other lighter-than-air gas), using a glass milk bottle, mixing some lye soap, and tin foil, and maybe water. It seemed to have worked. I've always wanted to try that with my kids, but can't remember the exact recipe. Also, is it safe? | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) |
Hydrogen can be made that way. Safe is a relative concept ;-) Mostly, it depends on you. When lye is dissolved in water, it liberates enough heat to boil the water. This means you should add small amounts slowly. You will not need much, perhaps two tablespoons. Performing the experiment in a plastic bucket with water in it will help keep the bottle cool, and catch and dilute the lye if the bottle breaks. Once you have the lye solution, adding the aluminum foil will cause further heating as the hydrogen is liberated. This is a problem because the steam will mix with the hydrogen. Also, as the hydrogen makes a lot of bubbles, these will pop and make small bubbles of lye that are carried with the steam. Lye is very nasty stuff. You will want to cool the steam so that it condenses. You will want to bubble the hydrogen through water to clean it from tiny lye droplets. So, you will want a stopper for the bottle, and a long thin tube coiled up in a bucket of water to cool it. This tube will be connected to a glass tube that goes through a two-hole stopper in a bottle full of water. The glass tube extends to the bottom of the water, and a shorter glass tube enters the second hole, and the hydrogen comes out there. It's really not as complicated as that made it sound. Most of the setup is to eliminate the steam and lye in the output. Just filling a balloon from the first bottle leaves you with a balloon that has a bunch of caustic lye water in it, which will cause a lot of trouble if it breaks and splatters lye all over people and furniture. | ||
| Anonymous |
Wow! Thank you so much. That question has been about 40 years in the making! | ||
| Anonymous |
if i live in north dakota with subzero temperatures, can i do the project outside and will i still need to the gass thru water? | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) |
Helium is commercially extracted from natural gas. When you cool natural gas to below -164 degrees Celsius, it liquifies, and what is left is mostly helium. It seems unlikely that you could do this at home, as even North Dakota rarely gets that cold. If you just want something to lift a ballooon, natural gas (mostly methane) itself will work, and hydrogen is easy to make. | ||
| Anonymous |
I want to make helium in a film bottle with a ballon on the top instead of a cap so that I literly made an air balloon but I also want it to fly. Is there any other material I can use as a substitute for lye soap to mix with aluminum foil and water or should I use something else? Amjad T. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (sfield) Senior Member Username: sfield Post Number: 260 Registered: 12-2004 |
It's hydrogen you are creating, not helium. A safer thing to use than lye is swimming pool hydrochloric acid, sometimes labeled muriatic acid. It is still not very safe, so be careful. Add aluminum foil, and watch the bubbles of hydrogen form. | ||
| Eli Unregistered guest |
is muriatic acid liquid at room temperature? | ||
| Anonymous |
no its a powder right ? | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (sfield) Senior Member Username: sfield Post Number: 293 Registered: 12-2004 |
It is hydrochloric acid, which you get by dissolving the gas HCl in water. It is a liquid. | ||
| Anonymous |
Hey, do you know how to make helium that you can inhale to make make a squeaky voice. | ||
| MadScientist (Madscientist) Advanced Member Username: Madscientist Post Number: 52 Registered: 4-2005 |
Helium is next to impossible for the average joe to obtain from common household materials. As Simon said, it is commercially produced during the processing of natural gas, which, unless you have an oil well or natural gas tap straight out of the earth, along with some very large and expensive equipment, youre generally not going to get it on your own. Since it is an element, nothing short of fusion (also out of reach) will be able to synthesize it either. If you want true helium, the best way to go about it is to buy it. You can get small quantities of it from specially equipped birthday balloon kits, or if you want a larger supply that you can keep around for more than just a couple of experiments, one can rent a cylinder of it from a welding supply shop, for a modest price. If you're looking for a light gas to inhale for the squeaky voice effect, I personally havent heard too much about doing it with other gasses. In THEORY, hydrogen would do it, and quite a bit better than helium at that, but since it is EXTREMELY VOLATILE when allowed to mix with oxygen in the correct proportions (remember Hindenburg?), it would potentially turn you into a fireball waiting to happen. So, I DO NOT RECOMMEND INHALING HYDROGEN, particularly if it has not been COMPLETELY purified! Even if you stay completely away from fire, spark, and other sources of ignition, there may be impurities (such as Lye, mentioned above) that may be present from the liberation process. These kinds of impurities are NOT something you want in your respiratory tract, and WILL cause VERY painful burning at the very LEAST, and more than likely would put you in the hospital with severe injury to your lungs, throat, mouth, etc. Long and short, DONT DO IT! Hope this helps clarify the issue between helium and hydrogen. | ||
| Travis Babcock (Travis) New member Username: Travis Post Number: 1 Registered: 5-2005 |
From what I have heard about the Hindenburg explosion is that the fabric had nitrates and aluminum powder in the paint (which is extremely explosive) and it wasn't the hydrogen that caused the explosion. The airship was landing during a thunderstorm and the crew dropped ropes down to earth( which had a lightning rod type of effect). Lightning then struck the ship, igniting the fabric. But hydrogen is still EXTREMELY explosive and I would recommend against inhaling it. | ||
| James P. Unregistered guest Posted From: 68.193.46.239 |
Hello, I used a drain opening liquid and aluminum foil to make hydrogen, it forms a LARGE amount. Very fine white bubbles form and it combusts when a flame is introduced. The liquid becomes warm and the aluminum foil is eaten away. If I accidentally inhail the gas it makes me cough and I become dizzy, is this normal? Are there other gases also being released that are not good for my health. Please help, James P. | ||
| mattb Unregistered guest Posted From: 63.17.54.29 |
i'm not exactally a md but if you cough and feel dizzy it probably isn't either good or normal. but once again i'm not a mp so i cant tell you what exactly to do. other that, unless you want to run the risk of turning into James the human fireball, i wouldnt inhail much of the stuff. | ||
| Naomi Christie (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 66.178.44.131 |
i want to create helium at home to make ballons float without using lye. is there any way i can do so. without any so fore danger to encounter in. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 732 Registered: 12-2004 |
There is a lot of hydrogen around, combined with other elements to form things like water. There is not very much helium around, since it does not combine easily with other elements, and over billions of years it has mostly escaped into the upper atmosphere and out into space. But helium is being made continually in the earth as radioactive elements decay and release alpha particles. This helium collects in the ground where other gases collect. As we mine natural gas, we find that there is a small amount of helium mixed in with the methane there. This is where most of the helium used for filling balloons comes from. When you liquefy the natural gas, the helium remains a gas, and can be removed. Helium is inexpensive, and widely available in small tanks sold at party stores for use in filling balloons. If you would rather not use homemade hydrogen, store-bought helium is probably not outside your budget. | ||
| chris (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 65.57.245.11 |
How could one cause a rapid release of hydrogen, if at all? I'm thinking between 3-6 cubic feet of gas created within a matter of seconds. 1. Is this possible? 2. If so, what would the ratio of reactants be to produce that amount of hydrogen? On a similar note, do you know how small helium can be condensed? Could 3-6 ft^3 of helium be stored in a cartridge similar to those of the CO2 cartridges for air guns and whatnot? | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 933 Registered: 12-2004 |
There are 22.4 liters of molecular hydrogen per mole. There are two atoms of hydrogen in a hydrogen molecule. Aluminum normally has a protective coating of aluminum oxide that protects it from reacting with water. We can dissolve that coating with sodium hydroxide (lye), so that the water and aluminum can react. 2 Al + 6 H2O ---> 2 Al(OH)3 + 3 H2 To make a mole of hydrogen from lye and aluminum, we take two atoms of aluminum and get three molecules of hydrogen. 6 cubic feet of hydrogen is 7.58 moles. That means we need about 5 moles of aluminum. The atomic weight of aluminum is 27, times about 5 moles is about 136 grams of aluminum. Aluminum is heavier than water, and 136 grams of water is 136 milliliters, so something less than 136 milliliters of powdered aluminum in perhaps a liter or two of lye should do the trick. The reaction is fast, and generates a lot of heat. You will have a pot of boiling lye that is spraying droplets all over the place if you aren't careful to contain it. The excess water will boil into steam, so your hydrogen will contain a good deal of steam. You can either condense that out (run it through a garden hose coiled in a bucket of ice and salt), or ignore it, since steam is lighter than air, and will make the balloon float (if that is what you're after). But unless you take care to prevent it, much of the water will probably still have significant lye in it, since the whole thing is boiling and frothing off bubbles of hydrogen in lye water. Any reaction that is going to make 6 cubic feet of hydrogen in a second or two is going to be quite hot. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 934 Registered: 12-2004 |
To answer your second question, liquid helium is as dense as it gets at one atmosphere, and solid helium requires something like 367 psia of pressure at close to 0 degrees Kelvin. At the boiling point, liquid helium has a density of about 0.125 grams per milliliter. | ||
| me (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 203.87.37.112 |
can you refill those helium kits that you buy at the party store? | ||
| Paul Haynes (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 192.102.214.6 |
Caution. The party trick of inhaling Helium to sound like Mickey mouse can be dangerous. This is only hear-say evidence. There are a few cases a year where people have done this only to die in the process. The bodies breathing reflex depends on the amount of Carbon dioxide. Our bodies do not react to the helium so the breathing reflex may stop. As I say this is hear-say but caution should be taken. | ||
| Maxthenat (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 24.187.16.209 |
I have tried putting pure muriatic acid with alluminum fiol in a plastic bottle. The acid bioled and and the foil disinitgrated in seconds. White, thick fumes came steaming out. Then, the bottle shrunk to one third its origanal size!!!!! .Can someone tell me what happened? CAUTION: IF ANYONE WANTS TO ATTEMPT THIS, BE CAREFUL!!!!!!!!!......!!! these fumes are suposedly very harmful. If you get acid in your eyes or skin youll get blind with nasty burns. | ||
| Michael (Michaelt) Senior Member Username: Michaelt Post Number: 135 Registered: 12-2005 |
One thing that happened was you chose the wrong container. Try using something made of borosilicate glass next time. | ||
| Daniel (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 24.28.78.210 |
Is this a better method of hydrogen production than electrolysis because right now it seems like you could get alot of hydrogen pretty quickly without all the electricity and possibility of getting oxygen instead. Also if anyone knows about Van de Graaf generators tell me I have a question thing running. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 1655 Registered: 12-2004 |
Electrolysis is cheaper. Both aluminum and lye are made by electrolysis, so you already paid for the electrolysis when you bought the materials. | ||
| Daniel (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 24.28.78.210 |
Quick question will PVC pipe resist any corrosion from the lye or hydrochloric acid. And is PVC pipe glue made out of PVC just want to be 100% sure. Also can the gas get stalled in the pipe if it's going through the coil but isn't going up? | ||
| Daniel (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 24.28.78.210 |
I forgot what residue is there from the aluminum reaction with the water. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 1666 Registered: 12-2004 |
Just because someone asked how to make six cubic feet of hydrogen in a second or two does not mean that doing so is a good idea. PVC pipe is not rated for this application, and softens when it gets hot. Only someone who knows what they are doing should play with this idea, and anyone asking about it on an Internet message board has already established that they don't know what they are doing. Don't play with hot acid and pressurized hydrogen. Just don't. Get a tank of helium at a party store -- it's cheap. | ||
| Daniel (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 24.28.78.210 |
Before I would do this I would make sure that I had taken every precaution. Also couldn't I use CPVC for the hot temp. because it's rated for high temperatures and is small enough to be easy to use. Again I want to say it again I will only use this if I'm 125% sure I won't die, be injured, go blind, suffer 3rd degree burns, or blow myself up. | ||
| Becareful (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 69.37.213.23 |
I once created hydrogen by electrolysis of water. But I did this ecperiment with a 9 volt batter, some copper wire, water with a little salt and two small flasks covering each wire. I was in highschool at the time and I told a friend of mine. He then took the same idea only he used a car battery. He siad this made enough hydrogen that he was able to put it into a garbage bag and made a "weather balloon". I also recall something about an explosion, but dont recall the details. I found some details on the electrolysis experiment at the link below. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water | ||
| recursive (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 72.81.243.224 |
Look guys, you can't make helium because it's an INERT GAS. Anyway, I'm gonna try inhaling H2 because I am an idiot. I'll make sure I don't get oxygen deprivation. but I wanna know if i risk random midget laser explosion cannibal horse malfunction death... you kno3 what i mean? | ||
| Helium? (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 209.210.117.162 |
Could 3-6 ft^3 of helium be stored in a cartridge similar to those of the CO2 cartridges for air guns and whatnot? I want to have a self-inflating balloon. I am hoping for a 3 foot tall balloon. I need the smallest cartridge possible. Any ideas? | ||
| Number One (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 74.75.69.117 |
Helium is cheap guys, and hydrogen or HHO can bring about some dangers if you do not know what your doing with it, At my work created hydrogen by electrolysis of water with a pulse & LHO timers are much cheaper as we use it to power our power ;) We also store meth gas from a local cow farm 10 miles away and burn that. However a current project my team is working on we are using 500lbs of helium a week. Its cheap & safe.. Just call a welding supply shop or a gas util company and ask for prices. We get monthly fill ups on our 2 ton tank out back and it isnt bad. making hydrogen using aluminum and lye is a waste of money. Get a glass jar, 8 plates of stainless steal 1cm thick, that can fit in the jar, drill four holes in the plates, sync them in order using poly rods, dont let the plates touch but leave about 1cm of space between them dont let them touch, then make the first place + on the 12volt DC current, then make the next - on the 12 volt DC current, and so on.. then fill the jar with water and add power to it, and wella it will make you enough gas to fill your balloon or what ever you want to make float in the air. You will need to come up with a way to direct the HHO gas to the location "balloon fill port" needed. | ||
| Ed Tautfest (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 216.228.196.7 |
how do you control the heat in makeing hho with electrolice [ water-soda-ss]? | ||
| Descent 3 (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 70.20.53.53 |
Electrolysis of water From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Electrolysis of water is the decomposition of water (H2O) into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen gas (H2) due to an electric current being passed through the water. This electrolytic process is used in some industrial applications when hydrogen is needed. An electrical power source is connected to two electrodes, or two plates, (typically made from some inert metal such as platinum or stainless steel) which are placed in the water. Hydrogen will appear at the cathode (the negatively charged electrode, where electrons are pumped into the water), and oxygen will appear at the anode (the positively charged electrode). The generated amount of hydrogen is twice the amount of oxygen, and both are proportional to the total electrical charge that was sent through the water. Electrolysis of pure water is very slow, and can only occur due to the self-ionization of water. Pure water has an electrical conductivity about one millionth that of seawater. It is sped up dramatically by adding an electrolyte (such as a salt, an acid or a base). Historically, the first known electrolysis of water was done by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle in about 1800. Efficiency Water electrolysis does not convert 100% of the electrical energy into the chemical energy of hydrogen. The process requires more extreme potentials than what would be expected based on the cell's total reversible reduction potentials. This excess potential accounts for various forms of overpotential by which the extra energy is eventually lost as heat. For a well designed cell the largest overpotential is the reaction overpotential for the four electron oxidation of water to oxygen at the anode. An effective electrocatalyst to facilitate this reaction has not been developed. Platinum alloys are the default state of the art for this oxidation. The reverse reaction, the reduction of oxygen to water, is responsible for the greatest loss of efficiency in fuel cells. Developing a cheap effective electrocatalyst for this reaction would be a great advance (see also[6]). The simpler two-electron reaction to produce hydrogen at the cathode can be electrocatalyzed with almost no reaction overpotential by platinum or in theory a hydrogenase enzyme. If other, less effective, materials are used for the cathode then another large overpotential must be paid. The energy efficiency of water electrolysis varies widely with the numbers cited below on the optimistic side. Some report 50–80%[7].[8] These values refer only to the efficiency of converting electrical energy into hydrogen's chemical energy. The energy lost in generating the electricity is not included. For instance, when considering a power plant that converts the heat of nuclear reactions into hydrogen via electrolysis, the total efficiency may be closer to 30–45%.[9] For mor info; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water | ||
| brockhigh (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 74.60.150.46 |
You better know that this stuff is VERY dangerous! | ||
| Michael (Michaelt) Senior Member Username: Michaelt Post Number: 186 Registered: 12-2005 |
Which stuff? Helium? Helium isn't dangerous. | ||
| Curious (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 112.135.201.55 |
can baking soda be used in this? | ||
| Theresa Simmons (Theresa) Senior Member Username: Theresa Post Number: 129 Registered: 1-2008 |
Baking soda (with acid) makes carbon dioxide. It is heavier than air. | ||
| HomeSci (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 72.175.79.186 |
You can't "make Helium" for the same reason you can't make Silver or Gold : they are natural elements. Helium is isolated from natural gas, so it has to be mined (extracted from the earth). It sounds like some of you are thinking of the explosive nature of mixing vinegar and baking soda. This is caused by the buildup of Carbon Dioxide. This gas blows off due to the creation of Carbonic Acid, the result of mixing Baking Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) and Vinegar (Acetic Acid). You can not isolate Helium with household items. As noted above, you can isolate Hydrogen gas but you need a few near-lab-quality containers/items plus gloves and safety goggles. | ||
| jacksonridgway@epasd (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 98.235.238.101 |
Is it possible to make helium by combinding two hydrogen molecules, because hydrogen is made easily but helium is not? Because the sun makes helium by fusing hydrogen together. | ||
| Clark Jonathan (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 121.54.99.118 |
How can i make helium in only using the environment and not chemicals? | ||
| Clark S. (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 121.54.99.118 |
Can anyone help me make helium with just using simple things that doesnt cause bad health explosions and fire or that is bad for the environment and can you reply completly thanks P.S.Please dont mind the spelling | ||
| Theresa Simmons (Theresa) Senior Member Username: Theresa Post Number: 161 Registered: 1-2008 |
You can make helium using any alpha-emitting radioactive source. Alpha particles are helium nuclei, and when they find electrons, they become helium atoms. It is unlikely you will be able to collect enough to notice without killing yourself, however. If you don't really need to make the helium, but would be willing to simply collect it, you could drill a well into a natural gas deposit. That is where most helium on earth is found. Helium is an element. Creating it requires nuclear reactions. But since, unlike hydrogen, it does not form compounds with other elements, it exists only in the free state. So there are no chemicals around the house that you can extract it from. You have to find a place where it collects. There is a lot of radioactive rock in the earth that is constantly producing new helium atoms, but they take a while to leak through the mantle into the crust. Finding a place that can hold them is also difficult, since they leak out of almost anything. But a pocket of natural gas is such a place. | ||
| will44 (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 87.201.188.141 |
I have a hydrogen car kit which has a hydrogen maker in it!. It was reasonably cheap at £37. There is a safety feature but i'm sure I can disable it... | ||
| Devin Zaloski (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From: 4.159.167.54 |
Who is Devin Zaloski ??!!? Have some cool questions for him, about helium. |
