Scrap Science - 2022-01-31
This was meant to be a simple video about the production of hydrogen and nitrogen gasses from urea. Turns out it's kind of difficult to get a good production rate, so we're left with this mess of a video. If you want to have a look at the paper I've based the video on, you can access it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26715063_Urea_electrolysis_Direct_hydrogen_production_from_urine If you want to see someone do this more successfully, you should have a look at a couple of videos by Robert Murray Smith here: https://youtu.be/ArEKafd0oBM https://youtu.be/LaT5PZixcV0
Must admit the video quality is very good and also audio seems more distinct. Shame the cell worked so slowly but from these experiments we learn things and helps understanding. No experiment is a real failure if you learn something.
Good video, but you gave up when it was just getting interesting! Why not test the voltage drop across the U (at 7 ma it should be negligible)? Why not try different electrode materials (carbon, activated charcoal)? Try adding various catalysts and wetting agents...
Have fun and try again!
low surface area & minuscule Urea concentration morning dark pee is more concentrated than this is the problem... oc caustic potash is cheap everywhere
@Edward Riggs And if none of that works just plug it into the mains and run!
Very well said good sir 👍
When I was a teenager, me and my friend preformed electrolysis on a concoction of random chemicals we found in his shed, including spermicide powder amongst other things xD. We took power straight out the wall into the cathode and anode and the liquid instantly started bubbling like mad, as you'd expect with that kind of power running through it. We then got what we called "lightning in a jar" where the spark was bridging the gap between the probes, again, as you would expect with that kind of power going through it. We then blew out the fuses for the whole house xD. Those were the days lol.
Im glad nobody got hurt that day.
Yeah, I wish I could say it was the dumbest thing we did, but it really wasn't. I don't know how I still have all of my limbs tbh. 😊
@DaftFader Wait a minute, electrolysis cannot occur with alternating current
I had a very similar experience as a young teen. My liquid mix was sulfuric acid and salt water and my electrodes were .07 mm graphite pencil leads. God help the house breaker it took it in stride But my gass collection system was retarded and I had a minor violent detonation and that scared the hell out of me! So shutting it down and hiding the evidence of my stupidity
Nice experiment! it's interesting to see that ammonia can be oxidized to nitrate but in urea it only oxidizes to nitrogen.
The experiment may not have been spectacular, but ya got style, Harry! Enjoyed and I appreciate you uploading it.
I've subed to your channel. It's interesting even if it was a failure in your eyes I enjoyed watching your approach and your evaluation of the procedure. Don't be so hard to yourself not any youtuber show the whole journey most youtber show only their successed experiments and don't share them experience that they made by the failed attempts that they've done , so keep the good work up pal 👍. I'm looking forward for more of your content.
This was interesting. Especially your solution for capturing the gas in the glass tubes. And I liked the surprise of the tiny amount of nitrogen after 24 hours. So definitely upload those videos please.
These are informative, pleasing videos. Not too click-baity, matey! Great stuff.
You tend to learn the most important lessons from it wasn't supposed to do today. Great video!
As much as you might think your voltage for dissociation is correct you also have to take into consideration the resistance. The voltage needs to be measured at the electrodes and not at the reading of your power supply ! I for one was very interested in your video.The atruggles we go through are becoming the higher veiwed videos as of late . Great Scott in electronics shows many stuff ups till he gets it right and explains what the problems were . It makes geeat real world content!
Nothing wrong with an experiment that gives results different than what you were hoping for. I think that it is a real problem in the current system for people to publish results that "unsuccessful" experiments never get distributed.
Great video, very interesting! What was the current being drawn during the 24 hour experiment?
The current pretty quickly dropped off after the oxidised nickel catalysts were generated. Most of the 24 hour run was drawing about 2 mA.
Actually this is really interesting! Hydrogen without oxigen could be used for a lagmuir torch. A Kind of torch that has the hottest Flame of any known chemical reactions. IT s also used for atomic hydrogen welding. The single H Atoms Düring recombination create a very very very hot Flame. Could you try making a Lagmuir Torch?
Thanks for keeping it real, not every experiment is a success but usually we only see successful projects on youtube. It creates a false sense of what is possible and easy, people need to learn that failure is part of life and to be expected and that it should not put one off. Just keep trying :)
Ok.
subscribed,liked,recommended
Reason.
Excellent audio.
And the comments themselves were very useful.
Your experiment has saved me performing a similar one.
I regularly generate pure hydrogen and pure oxygen using a spare solar panel,and upcycled household trash,for the kids.
you should report the number of coulombs passed through the solution and the applied voltage. If your power supply has a const voltage mode then you need to note down the current at regular intervals.
I think this is what's used as a gas generator in some variable rate automatic lubricators. And a battery and you can change the rate of gas generator by choosing a resistor.
"I suppose my channel could do with a bad video or two..." That's the spirit Harry! Best get the bad ones out of the way while the channel is small.
Congrats on the new followers (me included)! Youtube always needs more home chemistry.
Nice! 👏
Is it possible to make nitric acid by urea electrolysis?
It may be technically possible. Some studies have shown that nitrate is generated by some anode choices (such as boron-doped-diamond) at high current density. However, I'd imagine it would be very difficult to scale the reaction to efficiently produce reasonable quantities of nitrates or nitric acid.
its possible but the increasing nitric acid concentration will eat most membranes.
you need to use PTFE films as your membrane to do this and your electrodes are limited to the following.
Platinum, Ir-Ta MMO, PbO2, tantalum
Use a carbon or lead dioxide anode and add a small amount of aluminum potassium sulfate. You will get nitrate if you stir the cell.
Still useful info if remembered. In the event the techno-world shuts down, and one survives that aftermath, we will still need to have the info for the potential next future😊
Rob's channel is plain awesome ❤️
I really like your videos and I'm currently trying to get a chlorate cell running but all I could get my hands on is a power supply that has a max. output of 3 A. I haven't found any videos about what you are using so I would be really grateful if you would share what you use and where to buy your kind of power supply.
I actually use an ATX power supply from an old PC, coupled with a $15 adjustable buck converter from Ebay. The ATX power supplies are free if you extract them from an old or broken computer, and can supply up to 20 amps at 3.3/5/12 volts in most cases, so I've found them extremely useful in the past.
I actually have a video on converting an old ATX power supply into a usable lab power supply, but it's a VERY old video, and not one of my best:
https://youtu.be/ygvbdwl-0bM
@Scrap Science Thanks, that's a great help
The experiment may be tricky in the paper they state urine and urea aside of each other.
But urea is non conductive at first...it may become a bit conductive if hydrolyses occurs and that is what happens if you put a huge excess like 5 mol/L KOH vs 0,33 mol/L urea (putative average content of human urine is 33g/L what means 0.55 mol urea/L urine)...then there is a lot of K(+) and OH(-) and less CO3(2-) and NH3 as NH4(+).
But there is more into urine than urea... there are conductive salts of chlorides, sulfates, carbonates, phosphates of ammonium, sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium...so why the need for external hydroxides?
To my feeling...the process to convert urea to hydrogen and nitrogen via the use of nickel is not really interesting on a production scale because it consumes a lot of KOH, energy and some Nickel...Ok it generates H2 gas as a potential fuel and N2 (but that is also cheap and findable into the air) ...but NH3 and urea are much more valuable because much more handlable and reactive...NH3 can be used as a fuel too on its own.
If I was to make a no cost H2 generator...I would use Aluminum waste and a little NaOH...(or a little HCl).
The Aluminium would be scrapped of its protective oxid layer to naked metal and react with water to make Al2O3, AlO(OH), Al(OH)3 (or AlCl3 and Al(OH)3+HCl) and a lot of H2...aswel as heat if needed.
Al + 3H2O --> 3/2 H2 + Al(OH)3 + heat
2Al +3H2O --> 3H2 + Al2O3 + heat
Al + 2H2O --> 3/2H2 + AlO(OH) + heat
Al + 3HCl --> AlCl3 + 3/2H2
AlCl3 + 3 H2O --> Al(OH)3 + 3 HCl (HCl is thus simply a kind of corrosion catalyst here)+ heat
So we get hydrogen, heat and with the Al oxides and hydroxides we have some extra money when making microwave rubies, sapphires ;o) and we clean up all those Aluminium wastes :o) ;o)
As a plus the destruction of urea to make H2 and N2...generates one equivalent of CO2...what is absolutely not eco/evironmentally friendly while everybody on Earth tries to get CO2 emissions as low as possible...Right ;o)
PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from Science Madness forum)
Precisely. There are much better ways of generating hydrogen. This process is interesting from an efficiency standpoint, but since it requires (and consumes) hydroxide salts - which are energy intensive to generate - it's really not a feasible method of large-scale hydrogen production. And the production of CO2 is definitely not something the world is looking for. It may have some use in wastewater treatment, but I don't expect it to have many uses past that.
Honestly, I was only interested in this process for the nitrogen generation, but even that isn't particularly exciting.
@Scrap Science if using urine since urine is mostly water can you get o2 and n2 at the anode and h2 at the catode? thank you
Yo man. The fact of the matter is that the voltage used in this process is too big for the volume and shape you are using. You need a bigger (at least 2l) container and the same process as where you produce hydrogen and oxygen. Instead of nickel, try using stainless steel. It should do the correct math of what you were speaking about in the video.
"Click away now or prepare for suffering."
Not gonna lie man, that was some enjoyable suffering. 10/10, would suffer again.
Thanks for sharing!
Although not a successful project, it looks like you still learned a lot
12:45 is this video even worth uploading to my channel?
Yes, it is and thanks for uploading this. I actually wanted to know the opposite of the electrolysis of urea. I'm planning of separating impurities from urea through the use of electrolysis. The plan is as follows:
Carboxylic acids are the impurities in this solution of urea. Through Kolbe electrolysis, they'll be combined with each other, slowly making hydrocarbon molecules with few or no polar groups. These molecules, lacking polarity, should separate out from the aqueous phase as an oily layer on top of it.
Your video gives me confidence that it will be hard to break down the urea in this process (which is what I'm hoping to happen), so I'll experiment. I think this process might be more energy efficient than boiling the water (which does takes a lot of energy), thus it might be an interesting approach to separate carboxylic acids from other things in an aqueous solution.
I loved it, thanks mate!
So you could make a solar Urea electrolysis setup. If it only used ~0.37V to work.
Thank you for doing this video it answer some of my questions
Very nice experimentation good sir.
Holding two test tubes with electrodes in, inverted in a beaker of solution next to eachother is a far simpler setup.
Yep, that'd probably work better. Would require a lot more solution though, I don't really want to have to deal with too much caustic waste.
3:17 I don't think I've ever seen anyone use a glass rod like that
Chin up mate! If experiments worked as we hoped first time, they wouldn't be called experiments ;)
I'm planning to attempt a couple of your experiments later (when it's not so hot in Adelaide) - H2SO4 from CuSo4 and then some chlorate synthesis.
Thanks for the videos, keep it up!
Thanks for your videos bro, I'm pretty sure that you'll have 100k subs one day!
Can I use KAN for electrolysis? Could I get N2O from it?
I was kind of expecting this to make a bunch of side products that are essentially a random combination of N, C, O and H. Maybe it still does?
That's kind of what I expected as well. That tends to be the way it goes with many organic compounds. However, from what I've read, urea seems to be an exception in that it nearly exclusively splits into nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. Under some conditions, you can also get nitrate as well, but that's under high current density with some weird electrodes.
I'm pretty sure nobody has used Youtube as an electrolysis container before you did :D
I love the recursive aspect of a YouTube U-tube video.
Looking at efficency. If the voltage urea starts to break down at is .37 and one applies 1.5v then you 1.5v supplied - 0.37 breakdown =1.13v over bolted to push amps. If a cell has one amp flowing through it at 1.5v then your feeding it 1.5 watts, while 1 amp × 1.13v overvolted = 1.13 watts making heat, while 1 amp × 0.37v 0.37 watts of power overtime doing the actual chemical work of breaking urea to H2 N2 and CO2.
0.37 watts/1.5 watts consumed = 24.6% efficent. Of cource the hydrogen has much more energy when oxidized to oxygen.
si se libera nitrogeno y nitrogeno no deberia liberarse monoxido de carbono tambien ?
got a good laugh out of this video, thanks!
You probably know this already but if not just put the electrodes closer together.
Ha I like the hint on the bag of urea soluble nitrogen suits with your electrolysis 😅
Could you make another video of making nitrogen gas? A different method.
The best practical method is to filter Nitrogen from air. This can be done using a zeolite and pressure swings (Pressure swing adsorption) . You load an pressure container with a zeolite, and add compressed air. The Zeolite will absorb the Nitogen first. Then you bleed off about 20% of the pressure leaving a very high concentration of nitrogen.
The other was is to use a membrane filter that seperates Nitrogen from oxygen using compressed air.
@Guy Tech I didn't know that! I thought the only method I can think of was to burn something in air and then use NaOH to capture the CO2.
How is urea converted to liquid ammonia?
What is that power soucrce contraption in the beginning? Is it made out of a multimeter?
That's just my buck converter I use for electrolysis experiments. I put it on top of my multimeter for some reason.
Love your channel bro
Scrap Science - 2022-01-31
Hi everyone!
As you may have guessed, this isn't normally the kind of video that I'd even bother posting to my channel. However, things have changed in the past few weeks. After posting my latest video on making sodium metal, views across Scrap Science have increased by a factor of ten (which is awesome!).
With an influx of many new subscribers and viewers over the past three weeks, I've got a new camera, and this video is kind of just here to test it out.
Basically, I now have the capability to film in 4k, with slightly better audio quality too. I'm still working out a few things (you probably noticed I have some issues with focusing and exposure at the moment), but I wanted your opinion here. Is filming and posting in 4k worth it? It takes a little longer to edit and upload, but I'm very happy to spend a little extra time waiting for these things if people will appreciate videos with better resolution.
Either way, I promise my next video will be more entertaining than this one.
WaffleStaffel - 2022-01-31
IMHO, the difference between 1080 and 4k is nearly imperceptible on a computer size screen. The fact that a sodium video increased your viewership that much is interesting. Unless you have ambitions of living off of youtube income, you just keep doing you.
EvilPlagueDoctor - 2022-01-31
Even though I don't watch in 4K I do find things look sharper when done in 4K and then scaled down.
There also seems to be an unspoken requirement now a days to have 4K video to get YouTube to share your videos more frequently.
So I would definitely recommend sticking with 4k, at least recording in 4k.
DaftFader - 2022-01-31
@WaffleStaffel Na the difference between 1080p and 4k is massively noticeable on any modern day, average sized monitor ... it's the difference between 1440p and 4k that's less obvious. Unless you're talking about a laptop, then ye it's probably not as noticeable.
DaftFader - 2022-01-31
I didn't realise this was such a small channel .... I've been a sub for a while ... just never looked at the sub count .. I just assumed it was one of them huge science channels like Cody's lab etc. as it's very well presented. I hope the growth continues for you sir, you deserve it, and have some really interesting content! Keep up the good work mate!
gabriel giovani - 2022-02-01
The best part about recording in 4k is being able to zoom in without losing quality that much