stainless as electrode

I am building a hydrogen unit for my truck. I know that i must use stainless in some areas due to the reaction of steel with hydrogen, but is stainless a good enough condustor to use as an electrode in the electrolysis chamber?

OPH1, welcome to the forum

I hope one of our members having experience with this will see this and react


Personally I think it would be OK, but I lack the experience with this to make this reply reliable.

Never experiment with hydrogen.

Hydrogen is unstable and will self react with oxygen in a wide range of mixture ranges. I think it's anywhere between 17-90% hydrogen to oxygen level will cause a self explosion.

The result of the explosion is an interesting one as you wouldn't normally figure heat would give you this but in this case you get water.

Yes H2 + O = Heat + Water.

See references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Hydrogen#Safety_and_precautions

See how hydrogen can go wrong. Mythbusters Potato chip (Pringles) flame out @ Discovery.com

Post edited by: jmborchers, at: 2008/08/22 01:28

thank you for your concern. i am an architect with a mind for safety, and will not put myself or others in harms way. i have professionals from other disciplines working with me, but we are having trouble deciding what (other than platinum) to use in our electrodes. cobalt seems to be the next best choice to stainless if we find no other problems. any info we can gather will be helpful.

To answer your question stainless is not a good conductor. It is one of the worst metal conductors.

Look up "Properties Of Materials", "Thermal Conductivity", and "Electrical Conductivity"

Best conductors are; Gold, Silver, Copper, Aluminun.
The W/ m K for 99.99% copper is 401.

For stainless it's about 7 I think.
http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/ electrical.html

Stainless is made from Chromium, Nickle and Iron (I think)

Your answer of cobalt is correct in terms of electrical conductivity.

Post edited by: jmborchers, at: 2008/08/22 22:59

It is good to have DIY experience but many hydrogen kits are even available in very low price. Why don't you try them?

that's good
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