January 10, 2026

How to make water electrolysis

tutorial

Intro

It’s just putting electricity in water, right?….right?

Idk what made me so interested in wasting so many hours for such a stupid thing. Maybe the fact that it’s generating hydrogen, the smallest element. Maybe that there is this hype of using hydrogen for cars and thus making this in your garage may make you a businessman. Or just because it is very flammable and can replace petards (you just make boom-boom out of water)

Either way, I tried multiple designs like:

They were all bad. Bad production, wasted time, wasted materials

The design I settled on so far is not revolutionary either, but it’s the best I could do. It consists of a big plastic container that contains a PVC tube with a anode inside and a cathode that is around the PVC insulator. This circular design seems pretty efficient

Materials

I used plastic and recommend it. It is transparent, it is cheap. If the chamber gets hot the worst scenario is that it will melt Please avoid glass! Temperatures may get very high and that might explode shards right in your face. Also I found that the chemicals in the water stain the glass permanently into frost white

Other requirements

A power supply. Generally water splits a little over 1V, but in real life 2V is a safe bet. Still, this is only if you use quality electrolytes and chambers and electrodes. If nothing is forming you can increase all the way up to 12V. If bubbles form at lower voltage, do not increase it further as it will just get hotter without producing more.

← All posts