How to make hydrogen from NaOH, aluminum and water

There are many ways to skin a cat as there are many ways to generate hydrogen, I will briefly explain how you can do this chemically with household materials. To make this an automotive application visit www.h2gen.info for opensource hydrogen project.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Water
• Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH)
• Aluminum (scrap)
• A heat resistant vessel
• Safety Goggles
• Do this outside for safety

1. Use 100% pure lye only in pellet, flake of powder form. Visit this website to learn about the hazards of NAoH, sodium hydroxide, or 100% Lye. This stuff is very dangerous so be careful.
   http://www.physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_hydroxide.html
   I will also provide a link in resources.
   You can purchase pure lye from here www.biodieselbarn.com
2. This is what I used for my experiment. Add one quart of water to your reaction vessel, it's important that it can handle heat and be composed of plastic material. Add 10 tablespoons of lye to the water mix and stir slowly, let it dissolve into the water.
3. Add your scrap aluminum, if it has clean surfaces the reaction will start quickly. Aluminum cans take longer as the painted surfaces dissolve slower. Bubbles will form on the surface of the aluminum as the hydrogen is released the oxygen in water will form aluminum oxide that will fall to the bottom of the bucket and look like black sand.
4. The reaction will continue for about an hour, the bubbles released are hydrogen (and a little steam). Congratulations you have made hydrogen from a chemical process. Visit www.h2gen.info to learn how to make a car apllication for this principle.

Tips & Warnings

• 100% Lye is dangerous and will burn your skin and blind you if it gets into your eyes. It is also poisonous so keep it out of reach of little ones.
• The fumes coming off the reaction are less than pleasant and I would avoid breathing any vapors