Health & Fitness Electrolysis for emergency oxygen

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truegenius

truegenius

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You may be aware of oxygen crisis in india for medical use.
I have an idea and i think its worth a go.
I thought of using electrolysis for temporary oxygen supply to patient. I did some calculation and if they are right then it should take Rs50-100 worth of electricity per hour to produce enough oxygen for 1 person.

Can anyone with more knowledge of electrolysis do the calculation ?

Also if it is feasible then can some DIY or even some business make or provide way to make such a low cost temporary kit for this purpose which can last atleast a week ( for home isolation and hospital use too ) ?

Please, constructive and on topic suggestion only, if someone wants to argue then i have same thread on redit too so you can argue there as i don't care about redit.
 
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Interesting thread, also it corrected a mistake in my calculation of energy required, so 200w per hour is enough according to 1 comment in that thread, so its much more economical now for use.

Also, water have to be free from unintentional impurity which is easy as ~1 litre of water is enough for a day according to comment in that thread.
Hydrogen discarding is not a problem at all.
 
they are expensive 50k or more which most can't afford and are not easily available to buy, i only see them on indiamart, amazon don't have them in stock.
Something which can support a patient not so critical in home isolation for around 5k mark even if it works for couple weeks will be enough.
 
Electrolysis is not a economical option, atleast till it's efficiency increases. There are however oxygen concentrators which can extract oxygen from air. These are far more economical to run ( where as an electrolysis apparatus would be cheaper to make). The biggest difference between this extracts from air where as in electrolysis it is manufactured from water.
 
Here is some info i collected so far
Electrolysis is indeed used by submarines for their oxygen, they purify the sea water and use potassium hydroxide (sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) may also do the same job)
Though electrodes may get consumed if its anything other than platinum or gold (graphite rod tightly packed in microporus plastic/cloth may work too as the carbon particle may remain close together even after getting dissolved). Stainless steel will do too if water is free from iron else it will create toxic compound in water.

This link shows that sodium hydroxide is stable and doesn't create unnecessary gases like common salt would have.
www.quora.com

Why is sodium hydroxide (NaOH) such an effective electrolyte in water electrolysis? What factors determine how effective an electrolyte i...

Answer (1 of 2): Sodium hydroxyde is not consumed during electrolysis. Sodium can’t be reduced in water, and the hydroxyde is continuously reformed as it is consumed. Furthermore, sodium hydroxyde is very soluble in water, so it can be very concentrated, allowing for high current. It won’t produc...
www.quora.com

this video shows how electrolysis is used in submarines
Does anyone know from which shop i can get caustic soda (general store or hardware store or some other store) ? I see it is available on amazon but will take 7-10 days which is too much.
 
Look up XPRIZE.
If you are able to solve the efficiency issue in electrolysis, there is a lot of money to be made.
Lot's of other problems are also there and a lot of more money to be won

I really like your enthusiasm but there are a few important things to know.
One is the efficiency aspect that I had mentioned already.
The other most important one is that the water has to be very clean for a long period of time (as much as the patient needs) I'm guessing max 2 weeks.
If for example one uses common salt or there is a contamination in the water , one of the biproducts is chlorine gas which is poisonous. The trick is to keep the water free from contamination for these two weeks. We are talking about medical application here.
 
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