[haphazard]

I am performing 5 volt electrolysis with brine in hopes of producing small amounts of HCL; as I understand, successful electrolysis of brine should result in aqueous sodium hydroxide and Chlorine gas. I must not be doing something right cause I am getting everything but hcl. I have searched this forum and I have read that aqueous NACL will "not" produce chlorine, I have seen other people contradict this by saying they can smell the chlorine, and they can see the discoloration (etc); this has resulted in more confusion for me and more questions.

I should be getting chlorine gas, hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide. Instead however I am getting a jet black very "powdery" powder. If I let this mixture sit for a couple of minutes the powder stuff will condense to the bottom, and a dry orange ring, (which I believe is chlorine) is on the top of the solution. their is also tiny orange droplets underneath the lid of my electrolysis tube; (which is also condensed chlorine gas I beleive?)

I have added alot of salt; to the point of insolubility and started electrolysis, the result was a small cloud of black powder on the bottom, about 8 oz of clear water, and a small orange layer on the top. This result yields very little chlorine if any at all.

I electrolysis-ed the above solution for several minutes then added about a tablespoon of salt, I stirred it very well and the solution became very dark. I restarted electrolysis and came back several minutes later to find that one of my the nails: (electrodes) has almost completely dissolved into my solution.

the solution is barely caustic however; sticking the tip of a finger produces a very mild burn. (even though it should have caustic amounts of both CL2 and NAOH.) So I dont think the nail dissolved due to the "caustic-ness" and another electrode is completely un-touched. (one electrode bubbles like crazy and is untouched, the other one does not 'bubble' but is like 1/5 its original size since this experiment)

when freezing this stuff I get layers of it, but I cant extract it at all. their is this orange auroa(CL?) with the black powder stuff, (which imho is either NAOH or NA) and I am clueless about where I would start to extract the CL or CL2 from it.

to be brief, I could ask a multitude of questions that I could probably get answered searching around this forum. So I will not ask them, I do however would like to ask

A: what is causing my 'elctrode/nail' to dissolve into my solution?
B: How can I obtain either CL2 or CL from aqueous NaCl mixture?
Thanks for reading, this is my first post and I hope this is in the right section. Forgive me for any inadequacy   
 

[vmelkon]

their is also tiny orange droplets underneath the lid of my electrolysis tube; (which is also condensed chlorine gas I beleive?)

Nope. It is not chlorine.
It depends on what material you used for the anode. You probably used iron and you had iron hydroxide.

I don't know if you read the thread that I had started but basically, it does produce chlorine but most of it dissolves in solution. All the other halogens have the same property of dissolving in water. In parallel, it produces oxygen. If you use an iron anode, it will react forming iron hydroxide and probably iron(III) chloride.

I used a graphite anode.
I tested that it was oxygen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WwytVbSKUI

The gas is probably mostly oxygen and a tiny bit of chlorine.