Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: chrisrocks17 on June 20, 2013, 10:58:16 PM
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I was bored so me and my friend made a hydrogen generator for fun and because we are both into chemistry. We mixed water with some table salt and added aluminum foil as the anode and cathode because my friend has seen it done before. We plugged it in to a 12v 850mah adapter that was used to charge a flashlight and it ran for 5-8 seconds in the ventilated garage until I unplugged it, walked inside and dumped it down the drain. I remembered that table salt had chlorine attached to it so I didn't want chlorine gas to be produced. Did it produce chlorine gas? This was not on purpose but accidental. Did that 5-8 seconds do much damage? We both feel fine and had no shortness of breath or anything and we were a couple of feet away from it when it started running. Will we both be ok? I mean it can't be as bad as when I helped get kids away from a burning car and me inhaling all the burning rubber and plastic. We never smelled any odors while we were doing it at all.
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Don't worry nothing happened. if you have aluminum as anode no chlorine will be developed, because it reacts directly to aluminum chloride. Only if you use an inert anode like carbon then chlorine will be developed. The time of 5-8 sec. is also nothing. If you run for some minutes to hours then its different.
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Chlorine has a strong smell so obviously, you didn't have chlorine.
Also, smelling a little chlorine for 5 sec is not going to do much damage.