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Re: Electolysis of water



I tried it too, at age about 14. I got a hellava shock from my 12V trainset
transformer, handling carbon rod electrodes in saline solution!

Mark

At 22:25 19/11/02 -0800, you wrote:
Ludwik!

You tried this? I did when I was a kid. I wanted to "make" sodium, and
got instead
sodium hydroxide and chlorine. Soon after I asked a chemist (I lived in a
university
town) and learned I needed to electrolytically decompose fused
salt. Fortunately I
didn't try it.

bc

p.s. seems to me if one uses an electrolyte that has a high conductivity
there will
be little Joule heating.

Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> I have a question. Consider an electrolytic cell with ideal
> electrodes (Pt, to simplify chemistry) in a weak solution of
> a salt in water. The current is flowing through it and two
> gases (H2 and O2) are bubbling.
>
> Part of the supplied electric energy is thermalized (becomes
> heat) while the rest is used to do work (to break H2O
> molecules). Thus electric energy goes in while heat and
> bubbles are coming out at some constant temperature. I
> suspect that the second law can be used to determine the
> ideal possible efficiency (defined as work over electric
> energy). But I have no idea how to do this. What is the
> best possible efficiency at, say, 60 degrees C?
> Ludwik Kowalski
>
> This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU
or the AAPT.

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or
the AAPT.

Mark Sylvester
UWCAd
Duino Trieste Italy

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.