Make a Silver Oxide Zinc Battery

[@ShinoSarna]

After my awful high school chemistry classes, I'm now - as an adult - trying to re-learn science, and these videos are helping a lot. Huge thanks for doing your videos!

[@NurdRage]

I'll try my best to release the next video next week, but it'll likely be the week after. (video will be on making ammonia gas, or purifying dirty ammonium nitrate from instant cold packs.

[@RaExpIn]

@RS Creation I've seen this so often now. I'm very sure it's a scam. They use an IR laser, which can't be seen to light the match. No chemical reaction involved.

[@arnecl9566]

Welcome back ;) two weeks doesn't sound bad anyways

[@robinthrill3r7]

I did a video on my old channel of Ammonium nitrate and nitro methane. Was pretty cool..

[@robinthrill3r7]

Hey NerdRage! I got a quick question... Recently I've been needing a strong methylation agent and was looking into *Dimethyl Sulfate* as a good option.. Only problem is to import or get it in such large quantity (metric ton) would be pretty expensive...😩 Would there be an easier way to synthesis it? Preferably a cost effective route?

[@hidoHido-vm4en]

@NurdRage , the ampere-mete should be connect on serial mode not on parallel mode, Nice video, i like chemistry and i wait for an other video

[@explosivefreak666]

Nurdrage WAS ànd still IS The best of the best chemist ever around.!! I watch his vids over 10 years now, and I am priviledged to have seen nearly ALL of his experiments.! He has done A LOT, to intrest our young people into the amazing world of Chemistry... Thank you, Nurdrage, and ALL the best wishes for you.!

[@tictactoe101]

explosivefreak666 I agree with you, its a pity to see his view rates dropped while new comers like Nilered,.. channels took off since he loses his lab.

[@explosivefreak666]

2312napoleon : But NileRed is hardly a newb.! Hé's been playing the chem game for at least nine years now.! Prob longer, and he aswell knows his stuff... He belongs to the chem. vet's, who made Chemistry great again.! Check out his history... I'm not BS'ing you... Also Wé still have nurdrage : There was a time I thought we were gonna lose him, but Hé is STILL in our mids... Thank god for that.!...

[@garbleduser]

PLEASE cover plating onto graphite, especially nickel. Also, plate carbon nanotubes onto different substrates.

[@trcostan]

Would love to see you make a Edison cell aka nickel iron battery! They are some of the longest cycle life batteries known. I have seen some in railroad use that where installed in the 50s still working as long as the electrolyte is kept topped off

[@Patchuchan]

Fun fact silver oxide batteries were used on the Apollo spacecraft. In the CSM they were rechargable while in the LM they were treated as single use primary cells.

[@realflow100]

Also works with potassium carbonate!!!!!!!!!!! Wow! It's obvious I can see the zinc plating onto the electrode! Very good performance. You can also use lead dioxide for the positive electrode instead. to create a lead zinc battery and is rechargeable. Electrolyte may remain cloudy though. or settle at the bottom if you add too much.

[@laharl2k]

Take a look at sintered metal. Maybe you can mix graphite and silver or zinc powder, compress it and put it in an oven to sinter it together (like a brick). You could even sinter the metal sponge to a metal strip so you dont need anything to keep it together. I think they do something like this but with a mesh instead of a metal sheet to get more sponge and even more surface area.

[@5467nick]

I don't think you can sinter silver in a typical oven because sintering requires temperatures near the melting point of the metal, or very high pressures, or both. Zinc would probably work.

[@mikeguitar9769]

Sintering occurs at around 2/3rds the melting point.

[@idea-shack]

For those wanting to use sodium hydroxide, maximum conductivity if achieved at 15% by weight in water.

[@YSoreil]

SR44 batteries are very nice for a lot of older cameras as well. LR44 and the modern li-ion variants often drop to the minimum voltage too fast to be economical to use.

[@SeegerG]

Excellent! Very insightful. Thorough explanation of battery technology challenges. A favorite and reference for sure.

[@justarandomname420]

NurdRage? Yes, please!

[@SuperAWaC]

my grandfather worked on the polaris missile (among many other things) and talked about the batteries they used, which iirc were silver oxide batteries. he said they were the most dangerous part of the missile because if short circuited they would melt down and could explode

[@th3d3wd3r]

I'd love to see a follow up with several of these in series, give it some more interesting loads

[@grimmauld184]

Lithium Ion replaced it... Well then, you konw what to build next for a better result Cool video, looked into Zinc-carbon-batteries myself some time ago. A video in building a lithium ion battery would be really great, even though i doubt whether that is doable without a to high risk of something going boom...

[@officermeowmeowfuzzyface4408]

Dendrites can be "zapped" with a fast high-voltage charge pulse, ~250V, extending the life of some rechargeable batteries. I remember that from an old electronics educational kit.

[@AlexiLaiho227]

im glad to see you're doing okay!

[@Nuovoswiss]

I saw a talk some years back which found they could prevent dendrite formation by plating with an off-set AC current (eg a DC mean voltage of +0.5, but with peaks up to +1.5 and troughs to -0.5). Would be cool to see this replicated. I can't recall what frequencies they used, but the basis for it was that the "deplating" parts of the waveform would erode the dendrites, and diffusion would flatten out the concentration. You might even be able to use something simple like a joule thief to accomplish the offset-AC.

[@nlabanok]

The process is called pulse plating and its not like there's "one setting" that corrects for non-uniform deposition but there is a wealth of information available online around the search term "pulse plating" that will help guide one through the learning / set up / optimization of this.

[@arnaudlelong2342]

Nurd you rock star!

[@David.Harris]

It would be interesting to see salvaging silver from the disposable batteries.

[@TrentTationnaiseXization]

This is exactly where my mind is at. Good video TY!

[@JJJthebest]

Uhm, I’m super early so... Thanks for existing NR! Your series on sodium from NaOH was truly awesome to follow! K byeeee

[@TheChemicalWorkshop]

nice. hopefully youtube algorithm will bring this video to top !

[@kreynolds1123]

Likes and comments make a difference in recommends.

[@TheChemicalWorkshop]

@@kreynolds1123 that's why i'm commenting ^^ he is making goood shit for years

[@kreynolds1123]

@@TheChemicalWorkshop and why I added myvcomment. ;D I'm not as prodigious at making videos but I have a neat electrical motor I made and put up on my channel. Views comments and likes if you feel like it would be appreciated. :D

[@Speeder84XL]

Really cool! I never thaught it would work that well (I was more expecting something like those "batteries" you can make by a lemon and and a piece of zink and copper - that will at most light up a small LED)

[@among-us-99999]

just leaving a comment to feed the algorithm :3

[@blahsomethingclever]

'also being water based, they can't spontaneously explode or catch fire' ... nice feature for a hearing aid battery!!! ;)

[@medexamtoolscom]

You're no fun.

[@blahsomethingclever]

@@medexamtoolscom WHAT?? couldn't hear you speak up

[@Felixkeeg]

I think they're also used in pacemakers

[@Jeff-1337]

Timely considering the nobel prize in chem

[@kreynolds1123]

Could you try plating zinc or silver in the presence of a transverse magnetic field, and report if the dendrites differ or not?

[@stephenjacks8196]

Lithium cell phone batteries are ~3.7 volts for one cell. USB (charging voltage) spec'd 4.5 - 5.5 volts or 3 x 1.55 volt cells.

[@ttyler333]

Would love to see this revisited with a compressed electrode.

[@TechsavvyScientist]

Hey! I love your videos! Thank you for making them. I love chemistry and it’s partly because of you! :D

[@jesusbauer4074]

can you please combine electrochemistry and organic chemistry in one video like doing electrosynthesis of some compound ?

[@deathkeys1]

Now that's something I'd like to see... I've been interested for years!

[@fmdj]

I have a design in mind for such a battery that would just have one major flaw I can think of: not being able to be moved easily. The idea would be to stack two cylindrical containers vertically in a tube containing the electrolyte. At the bottom of each subcontainer would be a current collector and some silver at the anode side. The idea is that gravity should make the zinc (or the silver oxide) fall down onto the electrode itself when it does fall off, so no problem there, and you could probably put the electrodes quite close together because dendrites would only have a very convoluted way to cause a short circuit. What do you think? Probably gonna try it anyways as soon as I can cobble together a prototype, I'm curious. I guess the best way to understand batteries is to experiment. They still seem kinda magical to me.

[@NurdRage]

Not a bad idea.

[@fmdj]

​@@NurdRage damn, I built the aforementioned design, using just graphite as the cathode. I had a couple of decent cycles, improving with charge / discharge as the silver oxide was created I guess, but the electrolyte quickly became all black and the battery impossibile to charge nor discharge. After disassembly I noticed there was almost nothing plated on the cathode. I'm suspecting the metal particles mixed together and the battery self-discharged and got into an irrecoverable state. So gravity alone, probably not enough to keep the terminals separated. I now have a black, thick, very alkaline slurry containing probably zinc and silver oxide. I'd like to try to recover them, but I dunno how. Any suggestions?

[@absolute___zero]

Silver Zinc battery was used in the submarines in the 60s, one cell used 80kg and the full battery was spending 45 metric tons of silver, capable of delivering 100 cycles over 2-year life. It is very sad it has little use today and very little documentation.

[@GarwoodNick]

I just want to point out the obvious, that the power consumption with the boost converter is greater than it would be if a higher voltage battery were used, due to efficiency losses in the converter.

[@arnecl9566]

No kidding, but sadly it's not recommended to use a fluctuating voltage on a usb port.

[@p1nkfreud]

Bro it is time for a new hot plate/stirrer...I can tell that one has had YEARS of good use. I had a critical failure during a sandmeyer because of uneven heating due to buildup on my plate once. You can imagine the smell.

[@luishuberthacostavega2125]

It may be impossible to reach 10,000, but one day you would be able to show your identity (even if such Money is not reached? P.S: I admire you a Lot, greetings from Colombia.

[@drbrown2402]

Iron zinc works great...

[@justinhelget853]

would love if you covered nickle iron batteries

[@twocvbloke]

Well, it's a lot more interesting than sticking bits of metal into a lemon to make a battery... :P

[@BookProX]

I believe the cathode of a battery is *positive* , thus the anode is *negative* ... If you were making a home made diode then, at 4:19 in the video, terminal roles would have been matched correctly. Anyway, great experiment and video. Thanks.

[@masoudhosseinzade9621]

thank you so much for your great content.

[@smokeroot8008]

I would love to see the amonium nitrate video. Were you lucky on finding a new lab? I hope so, you are my inspiration. Love u so much

[@ncktbs]

so if you want ideas for projects i just read about Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene dyneema fiber it be interesting to see your take on how hard it it is to make

[@fabiosemino2214]

Let me translate the title for our British Columbia viewers, “this battery charge, but will it chooch?”

[@santaridesV10onacruz]

What do you use for a power supply to charge and discharge the battery?

[@darkangel2760]

Hi sir What's the chemical for iron pushing??

[@BothHands1]

such a cool video, thank you!

[@Lukegear]

Can you try making some fused salt batteries some day? I know sounds quite work intensive and dangeorus, but they seem like such interesting pieces of chemistry as well as quite power dense. I think they would be very interesting from an educational point of view, as there is limited info on them, more so in video footage form.

[@seffymidtatawa9323]

can you show us how to make brass sulfate?

[@bobwerner6512]

you does good work tanks

[@thelastofthelemmings6279]

This is soo cool! Good job!! Would gold work better than silver? Can you make John Goodenough's solid state glass electrolyte battery? I'd love to see a real person who has a better understanding of this stuff than I do attempt it.😀 Information about the glass electrolyte battery is a little "spotty" (which makes me think that it might actually work REALLY well) Anyway.. Thanks for the video 👍

[@randywiggins1248]

I was wondering if you have done a video on Leyden jars? Using different metals , materials ?

[@nibblrrr7124]

You: paper bags NurdRage, a PhD chemist: _assemblies_ 13:08

[@brooktavian3718]

Help me please, how to made spray chrome in plastic and metal media

[@cikif]

How do boost converter modules work?

[@thexp2808]

Great vid

[@American-Motors-Corporation]

Make a video showing us how a chemist makes a drink!!

[@Migueldeservantes]

It is there a viable way to turn iron oxide in to regular iron again?

[@ThePeterDislikeShow]

Could silver be made tarnish-proof by having it permanently connected to zinc? Maybe e.g., a silver coin made with a zinc core?

[@Jake-sw3ss]

Neat. I have a bunch of silver coins and bars. Gonna make a huge battery! Naw, I'm not ruining my silver.

[@sangjinchung6862]

great vid!

[@codWAWandMW2]

I dont know anything about what you're saying, but that shit was dooooope

[@SpitefulAZ]

What happened to the chloro platinum acids?

[@colloidal_gold]

great vid

[@austenwalsworth1583]

Was this a coincidence, since the Nobel in Chemistry was awarded for Li-Ion batteries?

[@davidparrish1133]

If I remember right, the lunar rovers were powered with silver oxide batteries.

[@MrDeathray99]

Around 5:45 where you say that it's a common misconception that cleaning causes the most damage it's more it causes the most monetary damage to coins because of the hairline scratches even the finest cloths produce and most numismatists don't like a graded coin with "details" or "cleaned" instead of a nice 1-70 number that is given to coins which aren't cleaned which can sometimes knock thousands or tens of thousands off the price of some rarer items.

[@lemmonsinmyeyes]

Hey @NurdRage on the subject of batteries: I've always been curious about those 'molten salt' batteries. They are used where you need to have ALOT of current discharged relatively quickly but also have ridiculous shelf life. Mostly used in missiles or satellites I think. Could you do a video on it explaining how that works? How can it be shelf stable for decades and not lose charge?

[@5467nick]

They don't lose charge because while they're sitting on the shelf, they have no electrolyte through which they can discharge. The salt acts as electrolyte only while liquid and it isn't liquid until you get the batteries extremely hot. Once the salt is molten, they start to self-discharge like any other battery.

[@troymoore7537]

In scientific endeavors, we sometimes botch it. So not to many worries about the over potential mistake. Besides, if I am not mistaken, some of the greatest scientific discoveries have come from mistakes made.

[@habibg2138]

Awesome.

[@nouarikarttina9521]

جميل

[@tahaaliakbarkhani9647]

Hi teacher, how can I turn silver oxide into metal, please help me

[@ARandomTroll]

how about a video about intentional hydrogen production from electrolysis

[@arnecl9566]

industrially, hydrogen is made from methane and not from electrolysis. Because the energy cost of electrolysing water is too high

[@Unidroids]

Hi, just a thought regarding the powder version. If there is more ZnO than KOH then there is no KOH left to help migrate ions, right? So the clear version with the solid coin had better ion conductivity as there were excess of KOH, just guessing. But if you have spare time it would be interesting to know, if pouring dissolved ZnO in KOH will improve the powder version. Also the contact and the separation should not be a problem as well as long as the silver oxide is not in contact with the zinc electrode ... maybe rearranging as Daniel's cell with silver at the bottom … Yep, that is the battery you shared with us Cu/Zn … Anyway love your science videos :-)

[@nunyabisnass1141]

Surface area. Its all about surface area. Thats why powder works better.

[@s.sradon9782]

I imagine that you could do so much interesting stuff with a sputtering magnetron.

[@MadScientist267]

*REALLY* wish people would quit calling this a "battery". That's a *cell* A battery is a *group of cells*

[@JasonOfTGA]

Lol, got a surprise seeing the Motorola M appear, as I did my first smartphone screen replacement myself today, A Moto-Z.

[@KJ7JHN]

Hi, could you please make a video on making dry erase marker ink? Thanks. Acetyl Alcohol, Ethanol, Isopropyl, ink. please please and thank you.

[@LoneWolfZ]

How about making a mercury battery?

[@itsprivate4360]

Can anybody tell me how long would a 12volt silver zinc battery last by continually powering a small car air conditioner (eg Toyota Yaris or Echo). I realise in this case the cars engine would be needed to power the air con but I’m talking about just running it directly from a 12v silver zinc battery. And approximately how much would that 12volt battery weigh. Anyone? Thanks in advance.

[@GarwoodNick]

Fuck yeah chemistry!

[@medexamtoolscom]

Isn't there a cheaper metal to substitute for silver that accomplishes the same thing?

[@Felixkeeg]

The voltage produced by a battery depends on the difference of redox potentials of the two metals. Iron is close (0.77 V compared to 0.80 V for Ag), though silver isn't that hard to get. Maybe look on a flea market for some old silverware and get one or two spoons?

[@joseheredia9275]

No "shattering your expectations" warnings in this video?

[@argenteus8314]

I was expecting the same. I was SURE that a video on batteries of all things would contain a warning that this is useless in practice, given how many of his other (and potentially MORE useful in practice) videos have such a warning. Of course, I suppose if you had to rebuild civilization, knowing how to even make a primitive rechargeable battery like this would be huge.

[@ovidius2000]

ItMayBeTheMostImportantExperimentsAHumanCanMakeInHisLifetime-Electrochemistry.

[@among-us-99999]

S p a c e

[@jonc4271]

Hi, do NOT know if anyone has asked you this, but would it be worthwhile to recover the silver from hearing-aid at home. How many hearing-aid battery’s would need to have to make any money at it ??? Let’s say I had been given 100 discarded (FLAT) hearing-aid battery’s, then how many grams of silver would be able to recover. I know that silver is NOT the biggest moneymaker, as that would be the recovery of gold. But if you can get the battery’s for FREE, any profit after processing cost would be better than nothing. Bye from John in the UK

[@FlatBroke612]

That coin is rayciss

[@localbroadcast]

who made the vid first, you or cayrex? somebody gettin burned here

[@NurdRage]

The chemistry is centuries old. So I guess some German guy?

[@mikeguitar9769]

That guy claimed that adding PEG/PEO to the electrolyte of a zinc-air battery stopped zinc dendrite growth.

[@tahwnikcufos]

I work with KOH daily... nasty stuff!

[@ThePeterDislikeShow]

Seriously Nurdrage you can't afford a solid piece of silver for your electrode with so many viewers?

[@ClownWhisper]

The reason why they didn't work good is because of how loosely the powders were held together I think you said that actually in the video didn't you? I think this is an old video so you probably not going to answer LOL but at any rate you have to bind the powders together tightly with the conductors that you connect with like wrap them with the wire around them tightly and they work marvelously if you do that I got a big bag of silver powder I might try it myself

[@robinthrill3r7]

I've been asking for months to do a video on the *Fluoridation of Methyl phosphonic dichloride* Well? .... please!

[@Felixkeeg]

Yeah, that's one easy way to get on a no-fly list and have a nice chat with homeland security and the FBI

[@adrianpip2000]

This request is just plain stupid. Pro tip: stop asking.

[@ID345891]

mom found the potassium hydroxide and zinc oxide solution

[@72polara]

How practical would it be to extract the silver from used hearing aid batteries? Possibly a video on this?

[@Romuls753]

If potassium hydroxide works better than sodium hydroxide would lithium hydroxide work better than potassium hydroxide?

[@RandomMan-nv2qh]

I dont think so , potassium ions and hydroxide ions are more easily seperated by water(since K+ give less attraction, due to shielding), (higher solubility) so more mobile ions could exist in solution. Lithium hydroxide is less soluble in this case(less shielding), so less mobile ions exist in solution. Im not professional in chemistry, so there might be mistakes. So , theorietically higher the period of metal eg: rubidium should work even better. Barium hydroxide is more soluble in water than magnesium hydroxide(almost insoluble) Edit: if the solution is saturated

[@Romuls753]

@@RandomMan-nv2qh I see how I was mistaken here, I had the order of alkali metals backwards. If the higher the metal works better then the best metal for that in theory would be ceasium or francium. Don't know how accurate I am with this but still

[@RandomMan-nv2qh]

@@Romuls753 yeh everyone make mistakes (im not sure mine is correct or not XD)

[@Romuls753]

@@RandomMan-nv2qh I know, I also can imagine that with the expense involved in getting something like francium you could probably build an even better battery that operates differently

[@lewismassie]

I recall that the ISS uses silver batteries until recently they are replacing them with LIon

[@Patchuchan]

ISS batteries were nickle hydrogen not sure why they replaced them with Lion as the former has a much longer cycle life but LIon has higher energy density about twice so they can be smaller. Now the Apollo spacecraft did use silver oxide batteries which actually have a better watt hour per volume than LIon but a worse power be weight.

[@lewismassie]

It must be the nickle part that confused me then

[@among-us-99999]

I thought the Apollo spacecrafts ran on methanol fuel cells?

[@Patchuchan]

@@among-us-99999 Hydrogen fuels cells were the primary power source for the CSM batteries were used for back up and for reentry in the command module while the LM only had batteries.

[@jamesheald567]

batteries HO!

[@TheHortond]

Chem Devil.

[@KowboyUSA]

24 grams KOH I can do.