Home workshop fatal tragedy

Back to the original posting,

As Hydrogen is clearly not the useful fuel-gas that it might seem, maybe the intention was to create Oxygen to boost the power of a conventional (propane, etc.) torch?

Electrolyse water, collect and use the Oxygen, the Hydrogen (lighter than air) will just float away and ...

From practical point of view it is rather difficult to produce sufficient amount of hydrogen to cause a reasonable explosion without deliberately collecting it somehow.

Approximately 2 x 96500 C (say 200000 C) of electricity would be fequired to produce 1 mole (22.4 L) of hydrogen (H2) gas at 1at/RT.

To blow up a shed in a spectacular way as reported by neighbours at least 100L of hydrogen would be needed and this would need to be generated fast enough to prevent dispersion.

To get there you would need about 1-2 hours of work of 200A power supply, depending of exact setup and well sealed shed to prevent hydrogen loss to outside.

In well aerated shed you would probably look for 1000 A power supply - unlikely at amateur disposal.

Conclusion: Hydrogen was deliberately collected and something went wrong. Possibly it was not separated good enough from oxygen produced on anode... and a burner was tried or cigarette lighted on etc.

Martin

If that was what he wanted, an oxycon would have been rather safer, not so much more expensive, no gas storage required and available for about 250W energy expenditure. Available whenever required, too.

But tinkerers will be tinkerers, I suppose!

The methanol was also added to aid evaporation and stop detonation