[geekygothy84]

Hello everyone!

I am currently working on an extremely important project but I'm not a chemist. I have need of one... so I decided to try my luck finding some answers here. With that being said:

I was told that in order to create 100 grams of water from a Hydrogen & Oxygen combustion that it would take  5.56 moles of hydrogen and 2.78 moles of oxygen. That's fine and dandy but I have a few questions that come along with this:

1. Is that information accurate?
2. How BIG would that explosion/combustion be? How much force do you think it would cause?
3. How many moles of Hydrogen can be harvested from Solar Panels (Or is there a better renewable source?)
4. What is the easiest way to harvest Oxygen? (Specific plants, Algae, something else?

I really wish that I could give more information on the project I'm working on as I'm super excited for it.

Although I am looking to work with a chemist and a mechanical engineer so maybe if you're -SUPER- interested... email me

Edit by mod: emails removed, please read the forum rules.

[Borek]

1. Is that information accurate?

Yes.

2. How BIG would that explosion/combustion be? How much force do you think it would cause?

7.32 and 11.9.

OK, now that you know you know nothing from this answer (these are just random numbers BTW), some explanation.

As long as you have not defined what a "size of explosion" is, you can't answer such a question. What you can say is how much energy will be produced. But even once you know how much energy is produced you can't convert it to the force, as these are completely different things. You would need to precisely define how the system in which the mixture explodes  looks like, and what force is measured.

3. How many moles of Hydrogen can be harvested from Solar Panels (Or is there a better renewable source?)
4. What is the easiest way to harvest Oxygen? (Specific plants, Algae, something else?

Once again, these are poorly defined questions. Commonly available solar panels don't produce hydrogen, but electricity, which can be in turn used to produce hydrogen electrolyzing water. Twice larger solar panel will be capable of producing twice the amount of hydrogen in the same time. Different panels (even of the same size) will produce different amounts of electricity. Thus, there is no enough information to answer the question.

You can get some very rough numbers from the power and voltage solar panel is rated at. 40W 12V panel will produce about 0.7g of hydrogen per hour at best (actually probably getting half that number would mean you are lucky). This is estimated assuming 12V is enough to run 6 cells in series at the same time (at 2V per cell) and applying Faraday's law of electrolysis.

[Enthalpy]

3b. The cheapest source of hydrogen is methane from a gas well. Crack it, burn the undesired fraction, keep the hydrogen. Alas, fossil fuels are really cheap: bore a few holes, fill many supertankers. High-tech solar panels can't compete, not even bioprocesses can presently.

3c. Bioprocesses produce methanol, ethanol or vegetable oil presently. Hydrogen is still research. Ethanol and vegetable oil do compete against gasoline and Diesel oil... Because they're taxed like food while gasoline is heavily taxed. Until this comparison improves, replacing all fossil with biofuels is an economical no-go, and you can trust the governments to prevent that.

4. The best source of oxygen is air. Huge plants liquefy it and separate oxygen, nitrogen and minor gasses by destillation. Oxygen obtained this way is very cheap, so any small-sized local process would be a waste.

Now, if you're willing to go green, these answers aren't the ones you seek... But eco-friendly alternatives do need to be competitive or at least affordable to have a slight chance.