Producing oxygen from chemical reaction

[arcturus]

In my quest to make brewing more difficult / fun, I have investigated producing oxygen chemically rather than using bottled gas.
1. does anyone have any experience with this?
2. as near I can tell, 300 ml of oxygen should be enough for a six gallon batch, anybody care to weigh in?
3. no dangerous chemicals are used for the reaction, no pets will be harmed during the process, and I may even avoid exploding my house. any other reasons I should reconsider this approach?
thanks!

 

[triethylborane]

In my quest to make brewing more difficult / fun, I have investigated producing oxygen chemically rather than using bottled gas.
1. does anyone have any experience with this?
2. as near I can tell, 300 ml of oxygen should be enough for a six gallon batch, anybody care to weigh in?
3. no dangerous chemicals are used for the reaction, no pets will be harmed during the process, and I may even avoid exploding my house. any other reasons I should reconsider this approach?
thanks!

What reagents/process are you considering to produce O2?

 

[lslbrew]

O2 is made up of two O and you won't ever have a single O so you can't combine Os to get O2. This means that you would have to have O attached to something else, break it out to make O2. this means something has to be left over. What would that be and would you want that in your beer?

 

[arcturus]

hydrogen peroxide decomposition results in the formation of water molecule and oxygen gas:

2 H2O2 → 2 H2O + O2

the reaction by-product is simply clean water.

hydrogen peroxide can be decomposed by a variety of things, but that's not part of my original post.

i have a spare 3 gallon carboy where the reaction will take place, with a tube running from the stopper into the primary fermenter, leaving everything but the oxygen behind.

 

[ajdelange]

Seems like a hard way to do what is essentially pretty simple with a modest size O2 bottle (which lasts a long time) and flow meter
I run the beer into the fermenter at about 2 gpm and the O2 at about 1 lpm so thats about 500 ml per gal which consistently gets me over 20 mg/L in the fermenter. So yes, I think 300 mL is a reasonable level for a 6 gal batch assuming you don't want over 20 ppm.

The problem I immediately see is that you can't generate 300 mL in a 3 gal (11.4 L) carboy. You have to generate enough to sweep out the air and then produce the volume of gas you intend to go into the wort. Plus you have to mess with chemicals. Easiest would probably H202 because you could drizzel that over some iron filings and control the rate of gas evolution but I am picturing the mess left in the bottom of the carboy (FeIII). Whether these difficulties bother you as much as they bother me is, of course, entirely up to you.

 

[arcturus]

Thank you for your thoughtful post. the primary reasoning behind this course of action is that i've already got the carboy and tubing hanging around, and i'd rather not buy more equipment that will also just be hanging around.
as far as the other issue, i considered that as well - it is totally within reason to fill the 3 gallon carboy mostly with water, then add the reagents. this is desirable for at least three reasons: less headspace to evacuate, slower reaction, and displacement of exothermic energy.