"Helium is so light that it floats into space,"
Yeah. They need to stop venting it and start recollecting it instead. You can reliquify it, you can't scrub it back out of the upper atmosphere. Well... you *COULD*... Not easily. We could try forcing alpha particles into some electrons. You can make helium in small amounts that way. And by "we" I mean humanity of course. (You're not getting me near alpha particles.)
You can make this with PVC pipe cheap. Add baking soda to plain water until you get 10 or more amps. The garbage bag trick sounds good.
Sounds doable. I plan on using a PC power supply. So the Amps are there, 5v rails regularly go up to 20+ Amps. And I have more if need be. To get it to draw 10 amps though, it's going to have to be one of three things....
(1) Very close electrodes distance.
(2) high water conductivity.
(3) (Relatively) high voltage.
How and where do you think these things should be optimized? That's whats getting me because....
(1) Close electrodes makes it harder to separate the two gasses.
(2) Too much electrolyte creates chemical problems, bad gasses, corrosion, the environment, hard to source.
(3) High(ish) voltage creates dangers at some point. Both fires and electrocution.
Of the three. I think higher voltage has the best benefits all around. If I can get a resistance of 4 Ohms, I can use 40 volts at 10 Amps. But that's going to be hard to do right, or safely.
I'm always careful.... OK, no I'm not.... Not at all.... Meh...