This USB bottle generates surface sanitiser from water and salt.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มิ.ย. 2020
- Initially I was sceptical about this device since it shares a common appearance to the "hydrogen water enrichers". But in reality this odd USB spray bottle does actually make sodium hypochlorite sanitiser from plain tap water and salt using a process called electrochlorination.
And it works really well. The water stinks of chlorine afterwards and an ill advised taste test gave a strong salt and chlorine taste. When it was poured into tea/coffee stained mugs it had a profound cleaning effect when left for a while.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia article about the technology:-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro...
If I sounded a bit perplexed at their current regulation circuitry, it's because it didn't make sense. It looks like it should be a simple current regulator for this application to give good control over the concentration of the chlorine versus time, but a further test with a meter shorting out the electrode plates showed a very high current instead of a fixed regulated level.
Other than the use of what is effectively a voltage regulator for controlling the current, the rest of the circuitry is exactly what you might expect.
The most important thing to take away from this video is that in the event of emergency you can create hospital grade water and surface sanitiser from table salt, water and improvised electrodes.
Now I'm wondering if the real purpose of the earlier water hydrogen enricher was a self sterilising water container that created low level sterilants.
I'd love to know what they're using as the electrodes. I'm leaning towards a very stable stainless steel alloy as used in some hydrogen/oxygen generators.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
It's kind of sad when you are surprised by the fact that the thing you bought not only looks like what was advertised but also actually works.
@ferkemall it's a lottery ... Sometimes I win, other times I can fix the unfit crap that comes, sometimes I send it back, occasionally low stars - this generates a lot of hate mail and spam. If I really want to be sure I pay the too dollar from reputable firm.
Big Clive purposefully buys dodgy looking stuff for this channel.
@@stephenhookings1985 There's skill to finding something that actually works. It's not purely based on luck, there's a strategy for finding scams.
it's bacterial killing rate has been approved by a recognized certificate authority. We made this in China. It's hot in 2020.
@@sophialei8215 And with a world wide pandemic this is one more tool that can help slowing down the infection rate. That's if it is effective on virus that is. It's been a while since I watched the video If I remember correctly it should be effective.
Yay! After years of watching this channel, I finally get to tell you something you don't know!
The tiny hole at the bottom of any dry-measure scoop is there for a reason. This hole is especially important for the dry measure of fine-grain powders, especially those powders that tend to self-adhere.
If the powder is packed into the dry-measure scoop even slightly too tightly, the powder forms a self-adhering plug that stays in the scoop. People tend to turn the scoop upside-down, then tap and bang a bit until a wee bit of air gets behind the lump, then PLOP! It all comes out at once, which is especially bad when you get one lump when you're trying to sprinkle the powder smoothly into a liquid. Messy splash!
The hole should be large enough to allow air in but small enough to prevent the powder running through like an hour-glass.
And then he says: yea I know
So it basically prevents a vacuum from forming? I know that a lot of tightly packed products are guilty of this vacuum annoyance. Try open the box to anything like say an iPad and you have to shake it for ages just to get it to slip enough to open it. Yet no one has ever thought of adding a few airholes.
@Roderick storey
That's the KISS principle in action.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
Or
Keep It Stupid Simple
I'm off to the bin with a drill !
@Roderick storey
You could probably make some money from this if you market it right and find a factory make the bins for you. I don't think I've experience the airlock myself, at least not with my bin, Though I notice it's hard to kind of open fully when placing a fresh one in due to pressure. Maybe a few holes will be useful for my bin.
@Roderick storey I did that years ago. Not even for emptying the bin but putting bag inside. It was a pain to get it inside and let all of the air out. A few holes and you can just put the bag on top and blow - it will fit perfectly.
The only inconvenience is smell when you have leaking bag - it will let the smell go out and air go in. You can use something like borax to prevent that.
Any kid that tried to make their electrolysis experiment work better by adding salt to make the water conductive quickly learned that it instead makes some nasty-smelling chlorine products. Source: my failed science fair project, age 10
baking soda op
You make it sound like a bad thing . . .
Been there done that
Heh me too using a model railway 12v psu that really didn't like it. Did have fun igniting the captured hydrogen tho.
And if you used copper wire electrodes like I did, you learned how to make copper chlorides...
"...and it works!"
(Prices jump by 50% on eBay.)
EVERY single "Hey this is actually really good and a great price" video makes it happen, sigh.
gam mal how u know though? Hmm!
@Lord Vegeta actually they cost way more than that, people buy Gucci and it costs 1% of the product people like to.show off expensive stuff those things are a privilege not this this should be available for more people
@gam mal ye but u need to buy this once and not waest plastic
There was one i found on ebay just now where they are asking $130 (ex shipping) for.
Who the hell would pay 130 bucks for that?!
Nice to see when a dubious-seeming product actually has real science and results behind it. I might pick one of these up myself!
Seems easier to just add a little bleach to the water to make the solution? That is a recommended disinfectant solution around the world.
@Myxolydia I think that was Bill's point. Rather than going out and buying a device like this, just buy a bottle of bleach.
@Myxolydia I interpreted "recommended disinfectant solution" to mean diluted bleach. So rather than buy one of these to make diluted bleach from saltwater, just buy bleach and dilute it.
@Myxolydia Diluted bleach is the recommended solution I was referring to. I would never buy a contraption to make it.
Damn thing is pricy on eBay. Hello from Nova Scotia.
You need to put a balloon over the bottle and inflate it with hydrogen. The following steps should be obvious 😁
agreed
He did it with a condom last night on the livestream, then he lit it and it went boom.
He mentioned that in the HVAC overtime podcast. It went as expected 😉
the problem is it also gives off chlorine gas so maybe not such a good idea as when mixed with hydrogen it quickly forms highly concentrated hydrochloric acid.
Well... he can always just ask the Germans! hahaha!!!
The enlarged photos of the circuit board are top notch, man, don't stop using those. It's an extremely helpful visual aid for you to be able to point out things so clearly like that.
And he did not stop
I'm amazed at how they look like 3D images until he moves his hand over parts of the image.
Electrodes are carbon coated. Any metal would electrolyse away, resulting in the "foot treatment/water purifier" brown soup. Scratching that carbon surface layer has caused the metal electrode to start to dissolve. You also wouldn't want to use this as a surface cleaner, as it would leave a salt dust/scale after drying, seems only useful for stuff you will rinse after cleaning.
i was thinking about that, that solution has a lot of salt, not very useful as it would leave everything sticky as hell
Would it release chlorine gas etc.. When running?
And how deadly would it be..
Keep away from animal deadly and don't run in a small area?
Before my current job I worked in molecular diagnostics, my first assignment at that laboratory was running a huge automatic RT-RT-PCR robot for detecting viral RNA in various bodily fluids. Anyhow, the first thing you had to do every morning was clean away any possible RNA (or even worse, amplified DNA) from every surface in the room with this stuff. And then follow that up with water to avoid the buildup of salt. What pissed me off the most was that every time people cleaned the actual instrument cover which was brown plexiglass, they'd not use enough water afterwards, leaving salt scale all over it.
@@zakofrx the by-product of electrolysis is hydrogen gas. The remaining sodium hypochlorite is generally of a low concentration (0.8%W/v) but is strong oxidising agent which will cause gas to be released from solution. the higher the strength, generally the more "gassing off" that occurs.
For cleaning surfaces, you would want it to run to completion, or close to it, at that point you would have much less salt. 10g in 250ml is quite a lot of salt and you would definitely have problems with salt built up, rust, etc. using that on surfaces. You could start with a lower concentration so there's less to get rid of, but the start would likely be much slower due to low conductivity unless that circuit is boosting the voltage a lot.
At the electrodes, OH- (equivalently NaOH, since Na+ is already in the solution), H2(g) and Cl2(g) are produced. The toxic Cl2(g) is quite soluble and readily reacts with basic solutions, however. The electrodes being close together and having a tall column of water above them will minimise the release of chlorine gas and ensure it's converted to NaClO bleach.
Used with a reasonable amount of ventilation for the H2(g), this is probably fairly safe and effective, so long as you run it until the salt concentration is low enough or on surfaces you expect to be tolerant of the salt and where you have tested a discrete area.
It would be interesting to know whether the manual, box or listing addressed any of these precautions.
I have a pool chlorine generator, operates with the same principal. Love it. A bit of salt and no expense or trouble of messing with Chlorine. It has a pretty healthy power supply to run the unit. It measures water flow, salt level and you can control the output. You use a regular pool test kit to determine the chlorine level. It recommends descaling every 3 months using muratic acid. I find once a season is adequate. Plates appear to be some non ferrous metal. I worked with an old radio guy who spent time in Africa after ww2. He told me of load testing generators for their shortwave transmitters using a 55 gallon drum of water and attaching the power leads to an electrode pipe in the middle of the drum and to the barrel shell. He said you poured in salt till you got the amperage load you wanted. But to beware of the hydrogen and have the barrel outside.
It's titanium. The metal is titanium.
@@curlyhairdudeify Someone else said stainless steel coated with Titanium Dioxide.
when I saw this I was wondering why they dont have these things, I am glad that they do.
Chemist here! Great video as ever Clive, essentially its a dodgy bleach maker! A few points how it works from a chemical perspective.... The anode will generate the chlorine gas (Cl2) and at the cathode hydrogen AND hydroxide ions (OH-) are made. Its the reaction between the Cl2 and OH- that make hypochlorite "ClO-" (this reaction will give a much better yield at cold temps - but don't pop it in the fridge as a build up of toxic chlorine gas in a confined space isn't a great idea). Chlorine doesn't dissolve well in water so chlorinated water is not as effective a disinfectant at hypochlorite which is 1000 x more soluble. You're right about the circuitry too, its hardly needed! in fact you'd achieve the result by lobbing a 9V batter in a glass of salty water.
Caught a BBC program about the crisis and how the food industry is coping with the demand.
One segment was a brewery in Wales. besides saying about brewing, it had a machine that churns out gallons of this sanitiser for cleaning out their pipes, tanks etc.. looks like the same principle but bigger. Salt, water and electrolysis.
They gave the excess gallons and gallons of the sanitiser to local hospital/police etc..
So yes, I might be interested in a sanitiser machine of this sort.
Much thanks for your videos. Very informative.
I use a scaled up version of this at the water treatment plant where I work to produce around 5 GPM of 3.2% Sodium HypoChlorite. The plates are stainless steel coated with Titanium Dioxide, to resist corrosion. We use Hydrochloric Acid to de-scale it but I imagine vinegar would work for your unit. I wonder if power consumption would be similar compared to size difference. Ours used roughly 62 volts at 3,200 amps after it's warmed up and running. 'Chlor-Tec' is the manufacturer that produces our unit.
So your unit is 5000 times bigger.
Unless I missed it it he didn't mention how long the unit ran, but at 2.5w it would take about 40min to reach a 0.12% solution.
That's a LOT of amps!
3200Amps ? wait what ?
Titabnium dioxide? I highly doubt that or in other words, no it surely isn‘t titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is an excellent electrical insulator and that‘s the reason titanium is used bc it doesn‘t dissolve under electrolysis conditions in chloride salts but forms a passivating (!) titanium dioxide layer which stops any current really from flowing through, that’s also why the titanium or titanium plated steel electrodes have to be coated with conductive metal oxides like lead dioxide, manganese dioxide, iridium dioxide or ruthenium dioxide or a mixture of those
10:15 it's not the hydrogen that changes the colour of the flame but rather the aerosolized particles of salt water. Sodium is notorious for colouring flames orange and hydrogen actually burns with a slightly blue color which is almost invisible. In order to get the hydrogen to burn better you could have added some soap to create hydrogen bubbles.
I thought salt was used in fireworks colours somehow 😊
Oddly enough, I was just looking at salt water pools almost immediately before watching this. Clive, you are a psychotic... I mean , psychic.
go for the first option
I work on salt water chlorinated pool as part of my work and this works in the same electrolysis principle splitting salt into its components.
The two are not mutually explosive.
I sell salt and had a salt water pool. I found that the plates in the device needed cleaning a lot. In the end even though my salt is ‘free’ putting chlorine in was easier and the pool is a whole lot cleaner.
paul webb Maybe you had problems with high water hardness, which causes deposits in the electrodes and can make the water murky.
Interesting how they labeled the component values including the tolerances on the important sense resistors.
The developer's way to tell the management: "If you choose to use cheaper resistors than specified then YOU are violating the requirements and not me!"
@@MetalheadAndNerd yes BTB bullying the boss :)
the most interesting aspect is the RGB, making this a Gaming! USB bleach maker
One would say it's all a load of cobbler's chappy.
that makes it easier to repair when the part you want to replace is just a carbon stain.
Legendary Seattle outdoor makers "MSR" (Mountain Safety Research) have long made a "pen" that uses batteries and salt to produce small amounts of sodium hypochlorite as a drinking water purifier. Look into how commercial bleach is made. The Lectrosan marine heads use the same process to sterilize waste.
Clever gadget.
Msr miniaturized it.
I was thinking the same thing. Remembered that MSR made something that made "bleach" to add to water to purify it for drinking.
It was called the Miox Pen, and was made for the military initially but sold to consumers later. It uses a very small quantity of water and rock salt to produce the brine, which is electrolised in a small reaction chamber and added to a bottle of water. I have and use two of them to this day when I go backpacking. They are a bit finicky to use, which I suspect is why the military no longer uses them. But they work very very well. I've even used it to make some bleach solution to act as an antiseptic when I injured myself in the woods. You can buy them on Ebay.
It’s so heart warming of him printing the paper instead of screen recording 😊
I love computers but staring at a monitor all day gets old pretty quick x)
Yep, my aunt has something similar (but bigger) that does this for her salt-water swimming pool in California. Works great!
Have one on my pool in the Phoenix area. Mine is the IntelliChlor IC40 and it works great. I have a 14,000 gallon pool, keep salt around 3,000 ppm and it makes chlorine. Best part is the free chlorine will combine back with the sodium again and keep the cycle going for quite a while. Plus, the salt ppm is low enough that it doesn't have a brine taste or any unpleasantness.
It's called a pool cloranater
@@ParkerUAS It's generally safer and much nicer on the skin though to use calcium hypochlorite instead. Though more expensive and requires softer water.
@@AstralS7orm Have hard water (thanks Colorado River) and usually have to add about a half gallon of muriatic acid every week to 10 days to keep my water at 7.6 pH. Running that and "99.98% pure pool salt" has yielded excellent results. No skin problems, no bleaching hair or swimsuits. The last thing I would add to my pool is anything with calcium in it since I already have an issue with the hard water combining with the pool plaster to form calcification.
Yes I have one...works well.
Back when I was a kid and discovering things I did exactly this: Putting two electrodes in water but since nothing happened I did put salt into it and sure enough: It smelt like the swimming pool !
Yep, did same, but found carbon battery rods were the best for that, other metals just made brown nastyness, and no Cl!
@@doctorbangs pencil lead also works :)
@@ARVash And that's how I wrecked all my pencils
Try put even more salt
@@doctorbangs I did discover that aswell and started using IKEA pencil leads instead of metal
I really like the thoughtful way you looked at this! You made it interesting, but also gave me ideas for things to try myself!
Electrodes are probably something like titanium coated with "MMO", mixed metal oxides. NurdRage talks about them in his potassium chlorate cell video. One of the few material options for electrolytic cells that deal with extremely corrosive solutions (others being platinum and graphite; graphite degrades fairly rapidly).
They seem to be indeed MMO coated.
yes, absolutely..we made it in China.
Gold might be cheaper , thick plating might do
I remember messing around with a similar process when I was a kid. I had no idea what I was doing and I bleached the heck out of my clothes. My mom was no to happy to say the least lol
Sir are you from Scotland by any chance?
K-H Gaming Canada actually
@@GeorgeJFW Canada is the Scotland of the Americas 😄 colder, more progressive than your southern neighbours (plus there’s the whole, Nova Scotia part)
@@kaitlyn__L honestly you hit the nail on the head!
6:25 Something from e-bay is working- "its very, very odd"
Syriusz B If it was for sale on Wish or Alibaba it would be a sign of the Apocalypse.
@@Ektalon I honestly didn't know what wish was until I googled this :-).
I think this is one of those "oneshot" micro controllers, means you can't re-flash it.
They are dirt cheap and pretty awesome for what they are.
Getting a hold of them can be tricky but worth it if you have a project where you don't want to waste some valuable components.
Some times you even get a option to buy them programmed with your firmware, if you have a couple of hundreds this can be a real time saver.
Something that does what it says.
Thanks for the teardown and explanation.
"Neat device, and it works." High praise.
also the effort you put into these videos are insane thanks!
Glad to see you came out today , Guernsey is coming out Saturday, great videos, thanks
It was good to sit in a cafe with a coffee again.
I you haven't already, you should do an audio book because good golly your voice is soothing. And you videos are great btw!
YES! a Clive video to save me from my current drought of entertainment.
You could have resisted the urge to make a pun.
What a cool idea! Buying two now!! Thanks BL 👍
I stumbled on this video whilst contemplating purchasing the thane direct h2o e3 water system (£70+). I have also purchased hypochlorus acid from a beauty supply store as a natural face sanitiser for £15 for a 300ml bottle. Now I have just found this device for £9.96 on ebay thanks to this video. I hated physics in school but this vid had me captivated. Thank you.
I love these videos... and this man's voice. ;-)
Definitely an interesting thing! - Oddly enough enough, I was watching an historic video which showed the water purification plant at a military installation. It would appear that it used a very similar electrolytic system to purify borehole water. The big difference was that they processed about 10'000 gallons at a time! But, I also remember when our school got its swimming pool installed (late 1960s) we, the entire school, were given a bit of a guided tour of all the "behind the scenes" paraphernalia, including what I now assume to have been the chlorination vessel. I do remember it having two electrodes (candles, we were told) which streamed bubbles into the water inside the vessel. I guess it's what comes around, goes around?
one of those swimming pool salt/chlorine generators built into a spray bottle? Brilliant!
Thanks for this one. Was waiting to see the results.
Yeah I saw this and I remembered I used to clean pools that have salt cells on them. You add salt to the pool and the cell uses electricity to convert salt to chlorine cool tech nice to see it in a practical use
Big Clive's porridge jug makes a cameo appearance? Nice! Your porridge recipe is a huge hit with my hunnie and I here on our planet. Thank you Clive!
In addition to the production of sodium hypochlorite, the product advertised on TV emphasises the production of sodium hydroxide in solution as a degreaser and general cleaning product.
I too recall there being a small chlorination plant at the schools swimming pool, which had been decomissioned.
There was also a still in the chemistry lab used long before ion exchange resins to produce distilled water and this was checked by customs and excise to ensure we weren't producing our own vodka! Always wondered why the kitchen supplied potato peelings to the lab!
Thanks clive for another informative video.
Very interesting -- never heard of that method before! Thanks for sharing this!
Did you know that the best way to mix the liquid content of bottle is not to agitate by shaking but to slowly turn the bottle upside down, then downside up, and repeat (slowly).
That's how chemists do in their labs. Best mixing, no bubbles.
Maybe if introduction of bubbles is a concern. But if it's not, shaking is faster.
Ultrasonicate it is the best way.
@@Jdbye that's what you'd think but shaking isn't faster. Ask a chemist!
@@unperrier5998 Depends on what you're mixing and at what concentration. If you're trying to get close to a salt saturated solution then yes, avoiding bubbles would be faster. In this instance, you're not anywhere close to saturated, and shaking is faster.
It's not the best way to mix it is just a way to mix it without making bubbles. if bubbles don't matter then it's a waste of time
Managed to get one for 17.72 GBP on EBAY, will be useful in the Van to save carrying other cleaner sprays. Thanks for the video
other spray is more electronic friendly than this spray, this one will corrode metals & electronics.
I used doctor bronner's mixed with water for doing everything from dishes to washing hands. Lived in my van for a while. No electricity needed.
@@NicholasMaietta Started using that stuff in a hand pump recently it really foams up much better than the supermarket refills even when heavily diluted.
For that price you could have bought around 7 litres of Milton Sterilising fluid, which would have made you over 1000 litres of bleach at a standard concentration.
Very nice to see a product that actually works and has science behind it very neet I might pick one of these up to test as well
Honestly during the peak of COVID-19 this would've made table salt even harder to find 😂
Great video, as always. Quick question. Do you keep all these PCB enlargement prints on file or do you chuck them?
Cheers from down under. 👍🇦🇺😁
I usually keep the images on the computer.
Very interesting product! I wonder if the electrodes are mixed metal oxide (MMO) coated titanium, as is the case in many electrochemical cells intended for producing hypochlorites and chlorates. Any chance you could spark test the electrodes to see if the substrate is titanium? Great video as always 👍 if those are mmo electrodes that little gadget is worth every penny!
Thanks for inspecting this hydrogen generator I've seen simular advertised on TV
Salt based pool systems have all but replaced chlorine pools in the residential market here in central Florida. Neat to see another implementation of this effective, successful technology.
The electrodes are almost certainly Lead Dioxide coated Titanium. They possibly added an intermediate compatability layer (commonly in the form of non-stoichiometric Tin oxides) to reduce flaking, but given the price point and the amount of visible flakes coming off during your test, I'd guess it's just a mixture of alpha/beta Lead Dioxide on some bare titanium for both the Anode and the Cathode.
(Ps. For those that are interested, some further, more practical reasons why I think PbO2 is the best fit based on the limited information available:
Manufacturing only one component for both electrodes substantially reduces the BOM cost of a unit like this. Furthermore, PbO2 is pretty much the only cheap and easily accessible electrode surface that can survive both cathodic and anodic conditions, especially in a cell where Chlorine evolution is a distinct possibility, while also making a good low-resistance connection between the electrode surface and a cheaper base metal. Lastly, PbO2's higher Oxygen evolution overpotential than other common anode materials is a further significant advantage in this kind of setup, where you only have a maximum of 5V and 500mA available, but still need to generate a suitable number of excited intermediaries in a reasonably short time.
I really do hope I'm wrong about them simply going with PbO2, without even warning their potential customers that the "electrolyzed water" produced therewith has the potential to slowly cover those very surfaces, that they are striving to keep clean, in an invisible heavy metal.
Yes, I know BigClive doesn't think Lead buildup on surfaces is a problem and I'm also very weary of unnecessarily adding to the current "safety-first" insanity, implemented by our neurotic nanny-state -overlords- , uh, 'protectors'; however we should all at least be able to agree that the long-term, ignorant "cleaning" of a baby/toddler's eating surfaces and chew-toys with lead particulate, is really bad.)
Use it for my pool and it works great however it converts back quickly to salt from sun exposure if there isn't a conditioner in the pool. Would be interesting to see how long the chlorination lasts in the bottle before the chlorine turns back into salt. What is the percentage of chlorine in the water?
Yeap, without the Cyanuric Acid (stabilizer/conditioner) up around 60-80 ppm in a salt water pool, the sun just destroys the chlorine quicker than it can be produced.
FiremedicJM Yes.
I would have thought that such an idea would have been available in every home for ages if it worked perfectly..
Due to it only being used for very specialist needs other than Chinese Junk it seems like it has a big gotcha they don't mention that make it no good for general home use.
@@jTempVids so would it last long enough to be useful if blocked from sun exposure?
Would a spray of it last long enough on a surface to clean and kill Germs before being changed back??
I guess one gotcha from it is your cleaning fluid turning into Salt Water which corrodes everything metal you spray it on.
UV light is what really speeds up the process of breaking up sodium hypochlorite into gas. (No bleach is sold in a clear bottle). Without UV, the bleach solution will still break down, but only by about 10% per month.
Very nice simple Chip design 👌
AWESOME Content! Using your videos to help sterilize and operate so that my small business can operate self-contained during the pandemic and beyond...
Just please don’t scratch it 😳
Those seem to be MMO electrodes, titanium base coated with manganese dioxide, lead dioxide or iridium dioxide
This is essentially how salt water pools work
I love how effortlessly you can read the ebay listing
Nice to see my GCSE chemistry helped with this lol, I just didn't expect it to work so well at low voltages
When Clive approves then I must buy it!
When he approves of something, he should buy a bunch before publishing the video and sell them under his name.
@@stonent I'm guessing he is more ethical than that, lol.
Ha ha that's true.. I often buy stuff he approves of, even though I have no use for it 😂👍
Me too usually but sadly this is a bit expensive for me.
If you go through the calculation it should take 18h to completely hydrolyze 10g of salt with 0.5A so maybe you could do with less.
On the other hand less salt means the solution is less conductive so the machine could have a hard time getting the right current to flow
Thank you for this video! I have type 1 diabetes, and my wife and I have been worried about cleaning supplies always being out of supply. We just got ours from the same seller, and are going to start using it this weekend!
Just got one of these (well a couple of weeks ago) after viewing your video! It works perfectly but only if I ignore the instruction manual! I followed it to the letter, filled up to the water line, added the salt and shook it up with the spray head on and turned to 'off'. Then, again following the instructions I connected it to the cable, switched on the adapter and pressed the button. Bubbles started to flow up inside, 'great' I thought and then water began leaking out from the seal between the bottle and the base! Thinking I had a defective one which would have to go back I suddenly realized - the thing is generating a load of gas and the instructions said 'switch the spray to off' - where's the gas pressure going to go? So the next batch went as before but I just loosened off the spray head attachment - brilliant! No leaks and cheap sanitiser for the worktop! So far I haven't noticed any salt residue left behind as one comment below suggested, I don't use the supplied spray head but transfer the liquid into an empty Dettol disinfectant sprayer. So far I haven't seen any residue at the bottom of the bottle but I was wondering if you can tell me if the made up bleach has a shelf life or not? My instruction sheet stated "We recommend that you use the disinfectant ....." And that was it, the rest of the sentence was never printed on the sheet! Just wondered if the bleach will in fact recombine into a brine solution after so many days or so or does it remain usable until used up?
The liquid does lose potency over time, so you have to give it a boost every so often. I loosen the cap on mine too.
My folks have a pool that uses this as the chlorine source. They dump 40lbs of salt in once a year and it bubbles all year long. Never had an algae problem!
What would be the effect if just putting salt in the pool, making it a salt-water pool? Is the water tasting a bit salty?
The best things about doing it that way are that it's an easy to automate, inline process that can't over chlorinate the water... and you don't have to keep a 50 kilo drum of rocket fuel oxidizer in the house.
@@elvinhaak nah, is called a saltwater chlorine generator, I use one for my pool too
Very interesting, I like it because it makes me think of how you can get something like bleach while living off-grid...
But bleach is practically the same cost as water, so maybe this is just a novelty.
If you don't have easy access to a store on a regular basis, this might not be a bad thing to be able to do instead.
Also, rain water and table salt are cheaper than bleach
@@InfernosReaper I guess it would really depend on how much bleach you need and what concentration you would want it at and at that point it may just be easier to buy something like pool shock or the concentrated bleach available at the store if you were using it for disinfecting surfaces. This device would also require power so while not a huge factor it is something to consider. A gallon of bleach lasts a long time for sanitizing dishes and surfaces. While it can also be used for water purification simply boiling the water is also an option as well as the many commercially available filters.
@@josephvanas6352 boiling water can purify water to drink, but it's not always a good option for sanitizing surfaces.
To be real, about the only scenario I see being able to make your own bleach as being essential is if you've got salt water readily available with the other options being too far away and not on hand.
So, in a hypothetical scenario where you're in a survival situation on an island and have the right materials on hand to make a battery out of a citrus fruit(or actually have a power source) and need to turn some salt water into bleach to purify some fresh water in a modified plastic bottle.
@@InfernosReaper and then you realize that you left your USB charging cable at home... lol
@J CC This. This is a really dumb product, I don't understand who this is for
I liked your info on fire alarms.
I actually have one of these, but writ large! In the US, "salt water pools" are very popular, advertised as being better for you with less harsh chemicals than a traditional chlorine pool; of course, they don't mention in the ads that you've got a giant salt cell converting the salt you pour into the water to chlorine. It is cheaper to operate per season, however, which is why I installed mine: salt is much cheaper than chlorine tablets. It also generates sodium hydroxide in operation, which negates having to add base to address acid rain. The unit I have uses a power supply that generates 35VDC at up to 10 amps; based on my testing (when I wired it in properly, "pool guys" don't know electricity) in operation it pulls about 300w.
Seems like a lot of fuss when sodium hypochlorite (aka thin bleach) costs 20P for 2 litres at my local supermarket.
I remember recently when no chlorine products were to be found.
Meanwhile, in a dark boardroom in America, Big Bleach is fuming over this product.
Haaaa
"For Mr. Clean's sake, take him out! He's cutting into our margins!"
I've made a few chloralkali reactors but it never occurred to me to think in usb/spray bottle scale. That's awesome.
I seem to recall reading that large hotels and resorts use a large scale version of this to make their own bleach for house keeping.
£18.50 buys a hell of a lot of household bleach, maybe about 40 litres of concentrated stuff.
(yes, I know this device still might have use cases for travel etc)
pseudomonad : salt is cheaper, th-cam.com/video/rSSFfuuVqpk/w-d-xo.html
Comvined with the cost of electricity and that the device will likely wear out faster than you can use up a tub of bleach I'd say it's around the same cost-wise.
@@klave8511 1 litre of bleach is about £0.49 from your Lidl/Aldi type places. You only need to dilute it about 50 to 1 in water (depending on concentration) so you would probably get enough cleaning for your entire lifetime for less than the £18.50 the bottle costs
Would a dab of fingernail polish on the scratch help fix any issue damage done by the scratching?
Yes it would for a little while. But I doubt it would last very long, in the conditions experienced directly at the cell surface.
thank god for ppl like you clive, i thought i was going to get stung. waiting for mine....
Hey Clive another great teardown but this time it has merits and im considering buying
I'm always expecting to hear that initial 'hum' at the very beginning of your videos caused by the microphone.
If you ever change it I would surely miss it xD
someone else who noticed! yet its always no nice, like a little coil starting up or something, a heart beat. plz never change it clive!
Sounds like "BONK!" through my subwoofer. Very irritating.
yeah id miss it too, that hum makes my brain switch over "kay here we go, big clive video!" lol
It's a quirk of the current recording device. The automatic gain oscillates slightly.
It's actually the phone vibrating after he pushed the record button
Take care: We were doing the same(electrolysis of water) in larger quantities to get the perfect combustion ratio of Hydrogen to Oxygen. In our youth we didn't realise that using salt (NaCl) as our catalyst would result in the byproduct of Chlorine gas. Shit hurts the eyes and lounges.
What happened to the lounges?
kaydog890 :should’ve used sodium hydroxide to increase the conductivity, not salt.
(Pure)NaOH is hard to get in a useful concentration when one is 13 years old. Draino is full of shit contams and chunks of I can only presume to be Aluminum or Magnesium. But your tip should help others. "Soap making" kits for my young chemistry enthusiast.
Interesting vid Clive, I Did this with a 9V battery ,2 wires with graphite (pencil lead) electrodes, worked great complete with a clip round the ear off the missus for stinking the kitchen out with chlorine gas. the commercial spray bottle version would be great for homebrew sanitizing. Job Well Done. Barnie.
Nice Video Clive ! :) its basically a water hydrolysis device,using stainless steel electrodes so they are non reactive,So iif you add salt water in it,,it breaks down salt which is sodium chloride,hense you get the chlorine bleach smell .Very neat and compact device though. I made a similar device for my aquarium,to generate hydrogen and oxygen bubbles long back.
Well, this time it's a real hypo product.
@Indosarnia - Sodium HYPOchlorite. Hence the name perhaps...?
Hey, so what is the pH of the water before and after you use the device?
That's a really good question. He should really test that out.
The Wikipedia article mentions a fairly neutral solution.
Just tested. Started at 5 with just salt water and finished at 8 using litmus test strips.
@@bigclivedotcom As Expected. The Chlorine is mildly basic, around 9 or 10 i think, so 8 isn't to far off.
However, the idea of sticking a condom over the neck of the bottle sounds like a good test as to seeing how much hydrogen it makes when it's turned on.
coaxfun : I have read that if the solution is basic the electrolysis will produce more sodium hypochlorite than if it is acidic. Some people add a little vinegar so that it produces less sodium hypochlorite and more hypochlorous acid. The amounts I don’t know, I add about a teaspoon of vinegar just in case.
I'm not surprised that this device worked as advertised. During my university days, I took a tour of a chemical plant that used an industrial version of this technology to produce hydrogen and bleach. The major difference between the industrial process and this device is that the electrodes were separated in the industrial version so that the gaseous products could be collected without contaminating each other. Hydrogen is produced on one electrode and chlorine and oxygen are produced on the other electrode. In the chemical plant, the bleach was made in a separate process.
Excellent channel Clive. Its nice that you also remind me of Ivor Cutler too.
Actually the reaction goes as follows:
Red.: 2 H2O + 2e⁻ ---> H2 + 2 OH⁻
Ox.: 2Cl⁻ ---> Cl2 + 2e⁻
----------------------------------------------------------
Sum.: 2 H2O + 2 NaCl --> 2 NaOH + Cl2
Part of that Cl2 goes into the air, the other part dissolves into the freshly created Sodium Hydroxide solution and disproportionates:
NaOH + Cl2 --> NaCl + HOCl
Therefore don't poison yourself with gaseous Chlorine and don't cause an explosion with the Hydrogen. Also, avoid skin and eye contact with Hypochlorites; this stuff causes cancer and blindness.
I have a home made one of these (super handy when the initial pandemic panic struck and everywhere ran out of sterilizers) and i use platinum electrodes in mine. Would explain why you only have to worry about descaling them and not replacing them or worrying about corrosion or wear..
I don't think that this device uses platinum electrodes, since they are quite expensive. The device all in all only costs 20 pounds. Also I don't think platinum is quite needed here, while the bleach mixture is quite aggressive I think titanium might be enough.
I initially thought Black Oxide but that would still be ferromagnetic. Platinum might work but why is the surface black (is it anodized)?
@@Ramog1000 titanium works fine as a cathode not as an anode its oxidation potential is lower than that of chloride.
anthrosaurian : Mine uses carbon electrodes. Initially I used electrodes from two zinc carbon batteries then I bought longer ones from eBay, welding electrodes. They’re really cheap and 30cm long. You can solder a wire to the coating that doesn’t go in the water. I etched the copper coating off in the area where it gets wet. I get some carbon flaking off but I filter the water through a coffee filter to remove it. I also use a stirrer to stir the salty water while the current is running so that the hypochlorous acid is distributed through the water faster. MMO electrodes are quite pricey, you can buy a complete cell for hot tubs but the price is a few hundred dollars.
@@klave8511 Thanks, I was wondering about carbon /Graphite electrodes. I think even low voltage AC will work.
Cheers Clive, really interesting. 👍
Very tempted to get a couple and use as a more environmentally friendly alternative to washing up liquids and cleaning solutions.
Make your own Kangen water. Go into the quack medicine business.
Oh god..that reminds me that my dad's "friend" was always trying to sell him quack stuff and one of them was Kangen water. He was mad when I said i didnt want to try it to fix my medical conditions cause he would waste his money. He said he didnt understand why I wouldn't just try it and to have an open mind. If you have too much of an open mind your brain will fall out.
@@Polite_Cat my aunt thinks that scio machines work, and she thinks that her daughter is sensitive to WiFi when she's holding a cell phone. I've tried to explain it, but she doesn't believe me (and yes she's anti-vax)
@@joshm264 The simple explanation is that people like that are just scientifically illiterate. It's like trying to explain electronics to a child. They just don't have the pre-requisite knowledge to understand what you're telling them.
Interesting gadget. I wonder about the safety of Sodium Hypochlorite in various concentrations.
It's just bleach, so the same safety that you would find in the bottle of bleach at the supermarket (though this is probably significantly lower concentration)
@@FlesHBoX very much, because I wouldn't put my fingers into a bottle of bleach, let's not talk about tasting it..., like he did in this video
Even in “liquid chlorine” or sodium hypochlorite the concentration is around 10% percent. I believe bleach is around 8-10%. If you pour it on your hand not much happens if you have a cut yes it will hurt pretty bad but not super dangerous. (Eyes and mouth is very different though) judging by the fact that smelled it and said it smelled like pool water (if you smelled bleach of 10% sodium hypochlorite it would hurt and you could see it fuming a slight but) I would guess it’s around 10ppm of chlorine. (Pool top safe limit is 4) in these low concentrations not much of a safety concern it will bleach clothing but that’s about it. If you were to add any strong acid to a concentrated solution (10% and up) it would create chlorine gas. But not with these low levels.
I don't think it's nearly as strong as commercial bleach (10% naocl)
Here is something I dug up from pubmed:
English chemist Henry Dakin and French surgeon Alexis Carrel developed Dakin solution to clean and irrigate wounds. It was originally formulated as a battlefield wound antiseptic during World War I.
The low cost and effectiveness of Dakin solution make this bactericidal antiseptic very popular in the healthcare field. It is used to treat or prevent infections from cuts, abrasions, laceration, skin ulcers, stage I to IV pressure ulcers, first- and second-degree burns, and even during surgery. Its efficacy has been compared to negative pressure wound therapy for treatment of diabetic foot ulcer infections. This is why Dakin solution (usually in a diluted form) continues to be used in practice today.
Dakin solution is a strong topical antiseptic widely used to clean infected wounds, ulcers, and burns. Full strength Dakin solution is usually diluted in water, depending on its intended use. A 0.5% solution of hypochlorite (containing approximately 5000 ppm free chlorine) is used for disinfecting areas contaminated with bodily fluids, including large blood spills (after the area has been cleaned with a detergent).
Dilute Dakin solution (0.05% to 0.025%) can be used to irrigate, cleanse, or as a component in wet-to-dry dressings to treat or prevent skin and soft tissue infections
If you spray bleach on your hand it eats at the mucous membranes or actually dissolves them.. Is why your hands feel extra slippery after.. If left on your skin it would eventually dissolve it completely down to the proteins.. Or whatever.. But my question is i was always told not to use salt in water for electrolisys because chlorine gas is also generated along with hydrogen.. Is why youre supposed to use baking soda to make the water more conductive... Thats just for galvanic reactions/ corrosion to get rust off of steel.. But also is how electroplating works when various metals are used as cathodes and annodes with different chemicals inside.. Like using ddrain cleaner with copper sulfate and it copper plates stuff.. But I'd say why items like these arent widely manufactured is because chlorine gas being generated.. Maybe im wrong but almost certain im not... Hydrogen generators use baking soda as the additive. Or at least mine does because of that...
The small hole in scoops is to help whatever has been scooped to release itself from the scoop when it’s upended. Depending on what it is (like fine powders) it could stick due to suction, the hole relieves that, crystalline stuff won’t need as much help.
I have a water purifier that makes sterilizing liquid in this exact same process, but it makes a tiny amount of very strong solution. You then add it to some water you want to sterilize and let it sit for about half an hour. Then open the container and let the chlorine that's left gas out. The one I got is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, comes with a 1 oz bottle you put water and salt in to fill the electrolysis cell. There's two chambers for holding more salt so you can make more brine in the bottle. It's charged with USB or with the built-in solar cell on the back. It's a fascinating device, not cheaply made at all. It'll make enough sterilizing solution for 150 liters from a single charge, and you can keep using it until you've sterilized about 50-60 thousand liters. Then you are supposed to toss it and buy a new one, but a skilled tech could probably just change the battery, as that's the limiting factor, the number of recharge cycles in the battery. The Potable Aqua device is designed such that you can select how much water you want to treat at one time, and all it does is electrolyze the same amount of brine for a longer period of time, making more hypochlorous acid from the salt water. You can make enough solution to treat 10 liters at once.
Here's a link to the manufacturer of the one I got. I bought it on Amazon for about $115 US: www.potableaqua.com/products/pa-pure-electrolytic-water-purifier/
I also bought one of those spray bottles on Ebay. I use it to make disinfectant spray to sanitize my table and stove and such. Works well. I usually run the processing cycle twice, as there's still enough salt in the water for another go-around. It makes the solution a fair bit stronger. I figured if the Potable Aqua device could run longer and make stronger water treatment solution, you can run the spray bottle process longer and get stronger disinfectant, and it does in fact work.
If I want to disinfect a larger area, or a large number of objects, I just put an appropriate amount of sodium percarbonate in a bucket of water, rather than mucking about with electrolysis at that point. It makes a big honking bucket of hydrogen peroxide solution. It's half the active ingredients in OxiClean, after all, which is half sodium percarbonate, half washing soda. There's a commercial product called 1Step for sanitizing brewing equipment that's essentially just sodium percarbonate powder. So I bought 5 lbs of bulk percarbonate on Amazon for under $20 and saved myself a pile of cash on 1Step, which is about $10 for a cup of percarbonate powder.
No schematics? You usually draw out the schematic? I look forward to that. :(
I should have, but was a bit thrown by the odd choice of current regulator. Maybe I should design one from scratch.
"Lets destroy this in the name of science"
We have one of these - looks like the exact same thing - and one from a "name brand" which I won't name because I don't want to be interpreted as a shill. I'd read the anodes will eventually wear away, and faster in cheaper units, and that's held true in our case. After several months of usage (a couple of liters every other weekend), this one takes three cycles to produce the same chlorine concentration as it used to, while the "name brand" unit still just takes a single cycle. For what it's worth, we also add about half as much distilled white vinegar as the salt to make hypochlorous acid.
@bigclivedotcom , it's a small scale saltwater pool chlorinator. These work amazing to turn salt water into chlorine to supplement having to ship in barrels of chlorine. If I remember correct, it cuts your chlorine use to 1/3 what it would be otherwise, and can make it 0 if you set it up right and have a low enough usage in the pool
Something tells me the extremely clumsy childlike wording of that wiki article means it was possibly written by the sellers of this thing themselves.
Yeah, it’s not looking good. The cholera graph is also pretty darn irrelevant.
It’s not the only article on this well-know process. There is a wealth of proper scientific papers on it to read.
Chlorination of drinking water killing germs irrelevant? You think?
This is an awesome find - the outdoors company MSR sells a similar device as a multi-part kit that sells for ~$250 USD. Same chemistry, different marketing shenanigans.
That’s exactly how I chlorinate my pool here in Texas. I add salt to the pool water so the salinity is about the same as your tears so very comfortable to swim in. Much softer and no chlorine smell. As the water circulates it passes over platinum plates with DC charge on and bingo, water is sanitized. No more noxious powders and tablets needed. The power does come a beefy transformer and rectifier before any other electronics. The only thing that needs to be added is HCl, muriatic acid. You know when you need acid added is when the pH goes low, out of normal bounds. It’s a great system.
Q: Get ya scope out... Is the output straight DC or pulsed / oscillating???
DO NOT CHARGE THE BLEACH WITH THE LID SCREWED ON TIGHTLY
Hey BigClive. I'm a fan. The second bottle I bought - I accidentally broke the first one - came with a label on the head that says "Do not repeat the work! Please remove the nozzle during electrolysis"
I thought that was an excellent warning. For anyone who wants to know: 1/2 teaspoon salt for light countertop mixture, 1 generous teaspoon for everyday heavy duty, maybe add more salt if you are going to sterilize a 4L container or whatever. Do your spraying and transfer the remainder out of the bottle. My second bottle also comes with an extra-long intake tube, as if the design was to always keep the lid propped up unless you applied pressure.
All units that we both have had leak water if you store liquids in it. That is also not a flaw but a feature. It doesn't ship with an english manual, but the instructions are clearly conveyed in the design, which is excellent. The message is: don't store liquids in this
such a cool device!
Saltwater pools have been around for quite a while and they have the same apparatus. A plumbed in unit has stainless steel fins that dissociate the sodium and chlorine ions and are rather efficient. The benefit to these is that NaCl, table salt, is MUCH cheaper than the chlorine tablets in traditional systems
Interesting, I'm here in the USA and when I search for anything even similar to this on Amazon I can't find anything, yet there's tons of companies selling their own spray in a bottle. Almost like they don't want people to be able to purchase something like this.