4 ms·

Could costs be reduced by using hydrogen?

by souterrain 11y ago

typpo 11y ago
Yep, definitely. We chose helium because it's easier to come by (party stores) and generally safer.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  Actually hydrogen is pretty easy to come by if you get some Sodium Hydroxide (known as caustic soda or Lye) and aluminum you can mix some NaOH in water, drop in the alumninum and out will boil out hydrogen. Capture it in your balloon membrane and voila, done. In general its not a problem if it isn't mixed with oxygen, if you live in the desert (as I did as a youngster) you can fill up a garbage bag this way and launch it into the sky) we tried to get one to explode but it just burns as the oxygen from the air comes into contact, and then waits for more oxygen to show up. Now if you mix it two parts H to one part oxygen? Then you can make a very loud pop :-)
  - srean 11y ago
    ...And stupid me, I tried to electrolyse _very_ salty water using household AC when I was in primary school. I manage to fill tiny bottles with potentially dangerous gaseous mix and leave foul smelling faintly green gas in the room (chlorine surely). Thankfully the worst that happened was a blown fuse. I was of course planning to make a hydrogen powered rocket missed the part about cryo... something :)
    - ChuckMcM 11y ago
      Yeah, that is a challenge (the cryo part). I was, of course, a huge fan of the space program and in reading about things like liquid oxygen decided to try to make some. Lots of books about it talk about using compression and expansion of the gases to cool down atmosphere to the point where you can pull out the liquid oxygen. What I didn't appreciate at the time was CO2 freezes solid and nitrogen liquifies before oxygen does. So my setup of four air compressors, each being fed by the previous compressor and having their tanks cooled by an ice bucket failed in an interesting way. The third in the series seized up when the tank's CO2 froze into ice and blocked the output port, and then the tank "rapidly self disassembled" from the compressor as it warmed up and I was trying to debug the problem :-) The tank and compressor separated, the tank moved about 20 feet away while doing its impression of a balloon flying about the room as it deflated. It killed me when the old Intel Santa Clara 4 facility was demolished to become data center space that they scrapped the Liquid N02 generator that was part of that building. I drove by one day and it was laying in the parking lot in pieces. I would have loved to figure out some way to save it, all that liquid nitrogen on tap for what ever evil mad science experiment I wanted. Sigh.

Could costs be reduced by using hydrogen?

typpo 11y ago

Yep, definitely. We chose helium because it's easier to come by (party stores) and generally safer.

ChuckMcM 11y ago
Actually hydrogen is pretty easy to come by if you get some Sodium Hydroxide (known as caustic soda or Lye) and aluminum you can mix some NaOH in water, drop in the alumninum and out will boil out hydrogen. Capture it in your balloon membrane and voila, done. In general its not a problem if it isn't mixed with oxygen, if you live in the desert (as I did as a youngster) you can fill up a garbage bag this way and launch it into the sky) we tried to get one to explode but it just burns as the oxygen from the air comes into contact, and then waits for more oxygen to show up. Now if you mix it two parts H to one part oxygen? Then you can make a very loud pop :-)
- srean 11y ago
  ...And stupid me, I tried to electrolyse _very_ salty water using household AC when I was in primary school. I manage to fill tiny bottles with potentially dangerous gaseous mix and leave foul smelling faintly green gas in the room (chlorine surely). Thankfully the worst that happened was a blown fuse. I was of course planning to make a hydrogen powered rocket missed the part about cryo... something :)
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    Yeah, that is a challenge (the cryo part). I was, of course, a huge fan of the space program and in reading about things like liquid oxygen decided to try to make some. Lots of books about it talk about using compression and expansion of the gases to cool down atmosphere to the point where you can pull out the liquid oxygen. What I didn't appreciate at the time was CO2 freezes solid and nitrogen liquifies before oxygen does. So my setup of four air compressors, each being fed by the previous compressor and having their tanks cooled by an ice bucket failed in an interesting way. The third in the series seized up when the tank's CO2 froze into ice and blocked the output port, and then the tank "rapidly self disassembled" from the compressor as it warmed up and I was trying to debug the problem :-) The tank and compressor separated, the tank moved about 20 feet away while doing its impression of a balloon flying about the room as it deflated. It killed me when the old Intel Santa Clara 4 facility was demolished to become data center space that they scrapped the Liquid N02 generator that was part of that building. I drove by one day and it was laying in the parking lot in pieces. I would have loved to figure out some way to save it, all that liquid nitrogen on tap for what ever evil mad science experiment I wanted. Sigh.