Home workshop fatal tragedy

Obviously not otherwise there wouldn't be any local news for a very long time.

All way's a shame when someone dies, I worked in the metal finishing trade and had several large automatic zinc plating lines which I was responsible for. Every effort is made to avoid causing a spark but many a hydrogen 'bang' as led to brown trousers ​ on one occasion I've seen plating barrels with a couple of their panels blown out !

H

Neil, is it possible that Michael W might have invented a perpetual motion machine as well?

Remember the Glasgow Airport attack?

A Jeep Cherokee crammed with propane bottles - they vented, but none of them exploded.

Maybe he was trying to make a hydrogen bomb and nobody told about lithium

Duncan - spot on. Thank you.

In my basement, only ONE plumbers' propane bottle. Propane stored outside, the large propane bottles literally outside. Small Acet. bottle and smaller propane bottle for torches, stored in a garden shed that leaks around the doors.

One of our neighbours, a few years ago, was cleaning something in his basement with gasoline (petrol) and something happened, maybe the pilot flame in the natural gas water heater, because he burned his house down. Everyone survived; seemingly he poured the gasoline down his plumbing drain, which here is all inside or under the house.

Most solvents stored outside, but some also in basement - it's bloody cold in Canada where I live, so the outside stuff is often not accessible without digging for a good part of the year.

I think we all need to be reminded of this - it's easy for bad habits to form.

Here's a pic of my winter-time silver soldering setup. Summer I use the barbeque with bricks on the grill as a stand. Note, the picture attached is not inside!

I like your picture, John, but what have you Canadians done to the weather? A pal emailed me from Toronto a few days ago and said they were in the middle of an ice storm so severe that he and his neighbours were looking out candles and flashlights in case the ice brought the electricity supply lines down. Hope you keep this weather on your side of the Atlantic - it's Spring here in Scotland!

Mike;

Yes, last snow that fell was Thursday morning - when it was 30 degrees in Amsterdam, it was below freezing here.

Spring came today, though, 11 forecast for today, 18 for Tuesday, then back down again - maybe an early winter will be here then. I hope the final bits of snow in our back yard (where that picture was taken) melt away before then...

(sigh) Oh! To be in Britain, where the cold snaps last as long as a pint of beer does! (smile)

You may have seen the claims from some that they can run their cars on water. This is in fact a method of generating hydrogen using stainless steel coils. It makes my hair stand on end, thinking of the very volatile mixture being fed into an engine manifold on a car and in many cases, the crude controls leave much to be desired.

A little known fact ?

A pure hydrogen 'atmosphere' is used to cool the 660MW generating sets in the nuclear power stations.

Reason, hydrogen is 2000 times better than air at heat transfer.

Some perhaps useful (or not) insights to the chemistry of using fuels such as hydrogen and propane fuels.

If you have propane stored inside a domestic situation (and likely even in a garage or workshop on the property) and there is an explosion and/or fire, your household insurance is likely to default. It should only be stored in special buildings, with vents at ground level, or outside.

Only butane bottles can be stored inside a house - like portable gas fires, etc - and propane should only be fed to things like cookers from ouside the building. All this is part of the Gas Regulations, so it may well be illegal to have a propane bottle inside a house, unless the risks are covered by a tradesperson’s liability insurance.

Water, when electrolysed, provides the perfect ratio of 2 volumes of hydrogen to one volume of oxygen which are required to convert those gases back to water without any surplus oxygen or hydrogen. It is called a stoichiometric mixture and provides the biggest bang. Over-charging a lead acid battery can create a good explosive mixture, too

A friend was charging an old battery and doing either some electric welding or angle grinding too close to the battery when his old battery exploded, showering him with (luckily) dilute sulphuric acid. He was alright (helmeted, or at least goggled, but his overalls were never the same!) It is the same way that some motorists have found out that they should connect to a jump-start battery in the proper order and place.

When I refined precious metals we often reduced precious metal compounds to metal sponge with hydrogen. The simple way was an excess of hydrogen and set fire to it as it leaked from the reaction vessel. No problem at all!

Any suitable reactive metal will produce hydogen when reacted together, and the reactive alkali metals will prduce hydrogen when reacted with water.

Some may remember that sodium produced a yellow flame, but only if the lump of sodium became trapped and hot enough to set fire to the hydrogen. Potassium reacted strongly enough to always prduce a lilac flame at the surface of the water. Do it in a glass vessel wit Caesium and the glass vessel will be destroyed. All simple chemical reactions.

I expect the bullfinch torch uses separate sources of fuel and oxidant or uses a lot of electricity to electrolyse water, then mixes them and burns the two back to water.

I use a surface mix burner when melting glass with an oxy-propane torch. I produce my oxygen by ‘molecular sieving’ and thereby separating the nitrogen from the rest (the oxygen produced is at best about 98% pure because of the other components in the atmosphere, down to about 88% if the machine is run flat out.)

My oxycon cost me about 150 quid when I bought it.

H O H generators claimed to be able to enhance car engines are a bit of a sales-hype myth. There is never a 100% useful energy conversion and there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’ where energy conversion is concerned.

.

Thanks for your insights ... you clearly have a breadth & depth of experience in these matters

Regarding the Bullfinch/SafeFlame system : Yes it "uses a lot of electricity to electrolyse water" ... Brochure: **LINK**

http://bullfinch-gas.co.uk/images/stories/virtuemart/category/safeflame.pdf

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 21/04/2018 20:57:36

It is very sad that somebody has died.

I went to School through the 1950s and well remember our enthusiastic Secondary School Science Teacher using electrolysis to demonstrate the Hydrogen ‘pop’.

Edited By V8Eng on 21/04/2018 22:07:22

Yes, theres also a whole host of other (possibly bogus) claims about what HxOxH can do, which is precisely why they claim it because they want to monetise the technology, most mainstream science claims it's little more than a glorified hydrogen torch. The proponents swear by it.

But like you said, there's no such thing as a free lunch with energy, you can't expect to get more energy than the potential of the input.

There's nothing magical about hydrogen. If it's not mixed with air / oxygen, it simply burns like any other fuel, albeit no carbon, so no soot. On the other hand, almost any combustible material will explode if correctly divided and mixed with oxygen eg coal dust, sawdust, flour, petrol, LPG...hydrogen etc etc.

Using hydrogen as a coolant is "2000 times better than air" presumably because it changes state from liquid to gas ("phase change", "heat of evaporation" etc) in the process. Rather like water or ammonia or any number of liquids / refrigerants.

Murray

Murraay,

I don’t think there would be any phase change using hydrogen to cool a nuclear reactor (well, not while it is producing!). They did OK with the AGRs being cooled by CO2...

.

It's way beyond my experience, but I was looking at this note last night: **LINK**

https://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-113/issue-6/features/hydrogen-cools-well-but-safety-is-crucial.html

... Does that sound more realistic ?

MichaelG.

I have often thought that once the cost was paid, of setting up the sunlight/voltaic cells to produce free electricity, it should be possible to use said elec. to electrolyse water, collect and store the gasses for later use as vehicle fuel or distillation of seawater to irrigate, e.g., the Sahara desert and put that hot area to good use for crop growing. What MichaelG says above about amount of elec. required, if correct, makes me doubtful if my thoughts would be practicable.

John

Edited By DMB on 22/04/2018 08:49:17

.

This is clipped from the Bullfinch/SafeFlame brochure:

.

QED ... I would think.

MichaelG.

I have just found this; which apparently contradicts my opinion: **LINK**

https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/7/5/hydrogen-made-by-the-electrolysis-of-water-is-now-cost-competitive-and-gives-us-another-building-block-for-the-low-carbon-economy

That said: I do struggle to find his opening remark convincing.

[quote] Generating an extra unit of electricity via PV or wind has no cost. [/quote]

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 22/04/2018 10:04:44