How to Create Hydrogen-Oxygen Gas
Hydrogen and oxygen are both highly reactive gases at standard temperature and pressure, meaning that they must be obtained from some compound. While both of these elements are common, there are only a few specific methods that will easily yield the pure elements. Water can be hydrolyzed (split) to yield both hydrogen and oxygen at the same time. There are also a variety of methods that will yield one of these gases economically.
Instructions
-
-
1
Produce hydrogen and oxygen simultaneously. Hydrogen and oxygen can be liberated at the same time by passing an electrical current through water in a process called hydrolysis. This method is not commercially economical as there are cheaper methods of obtaining both gases.
-
2
Produce hydrogen in the the laboratory. Hydrogen is released during the reaction of an acid with a metal. The following equation shows a typical reaction of this type using zinc (Zn) as the metal and hydrochloric acid (HCl) as the acid:
Zn + 2HCl ' ZnCl2 + H2 -
-
3
Obtain hydrogen economically. Hydrogen can be liberated in commercial quantities by removing it from methane, a component of natural gas. Steam (H2O) reacts with methane (CH4) in a temperature range of 700 to 1100 degrees C to yield hydrogen gas (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO). The following equation shows this reaction:
CH4 + H2O ' CO + 3 H2. -
4
Extract oxygen with fractional distillation of the air. Cool air down to a liquid and carefully heat the liquid air until the nitrogen boils off but the oxygen remains a liquid. The additional components in the air can also be separated out by exploiting the differences in their boiling points.
-
5
Pass clean dry air through molecular sieves of a very specific size. These sieves will absorb the nitrogen but not the oxygen, due to the difference in the size of these atoms. The resulting gas is at least 90 percent oxygen.
-
1
