You can inflate balloons at home using a homemade hydrogen plant. To make it, you will need a bottle, copper sulfate, salt, a syringe, a hose, and copper and aluminum wires.
Balloons are an invariable attribute of the holiday, but what if you have to inflate a large number of balloons, but there are no helium balloons? No problem. You can get your own hydrogen without even leaving your home. To do this, you will need a simple plastic bottle, syringe, hose, natural cork, copper sulfate, copper wire, aluminum wire, and preferably aluminum foil, sealant, table salt and the balloons themselves.
As a replacement for aluminum wire or foil, you can use an aluminum can, the only condition is that you need to clean its inner surface from paint and a protective polymer layer. And yet - all work is best done with protective gloves and goggles.
Hydrogen plant assembly stages
You need to drill two holes in the bottle cap: one for the hose, the other for the syringe. For better attachment of the syringe to its tip and in one of the holes on the lid, it is advisable to make a thread. Fix a syringe and a hose in the holes made, and grease their joints with sealant. Put a plug on the free end of the hose - it will secure the ball. A copper wire must be attached to the syringe plunger, and the joint must also be treated with a sealant. An aluminum wire or crumpled foil must be tied to the free end of the attached wire. The piston will allow free movement of the aluminum reagent in the bottle.
By inserting the aluminum reagent into the bottle and closing the lid, you can get a complete hydrogen plant. To start using it, the cap from the bottle, together with the aluminum reagent, must be removed, and copper sulfate and edible salt must be poured into the bottle in a 1: 1 ratio. Cover with water and wait until the mixture is completely dissolved. The contents of the bottle need cold, for this you can put it in a basin of cold water. A balloon is put on the plug, fixed at the end of the hose, after which the aluminum must be immersed in a solution of vitriol and salt and the cap screwed on.
How is the process of inflating the balloon
The reaction will follow immediately: the evolved hydrogen will fill the ball. As the aluminum oxide film dissolves and the solution heats up, the reaction will only accelerate. If hydrogen evolution is too violent, you can remove the aluminum from the solution by pulling the syringe plunger towards you. It is strictly forbidden to pull a balloon directly onto the neck of the bottle! The resulting balls can be left as they are, or you can stick around them with white or black bags, as well as attach an LED and launch the ball in the dark.
