The 19th century was an absolutely electrifying era, including in a literal sense. Although the phenomenon of electricity had been known by that time for centuries, actually making it do useful work was a much taller order. Aside from big, coal-powered generators, there also was a need for a more compact electrochemical solution, such as in the form of a wet or dry cell. One of the first major commercial successes here came in the form of the Leclanché cell, such as the genuine version that [Big Clive] found in an old UK building’s attic and has now revived.

Invented in 1866 by French scientist Georges Leclanché, the Leclanché cell features an ammonium chloride electrolyte solution, carbon cathode and zinc anode. There’s also a manganese dioxide depolarizer for preventing hydrogen build-up. Here water is the solvent for the ammonium chloride (also known as sal ammoniac).

The version that [Clive] got his grubby mitts on features a glass container, an already partially consumed zinc electrode and a slightly cracked porous ceramic tub that contains the carbon electrode and the manganese dioxide. After placing the components inside the specially shaped glass jar and filling it with an electrolyte mixture of one part ammonium chloride and four parts water by weight, the cell starts generating its approximate 1.4 VDC.

This type of wet cell was very popular, being essentially ‘rechargeable’ by topping up the water and replacing the zinc electrode consumable. They did suffer from a voltage drop-off during use due to increasing internal resistance, something that got improved upon with the zinc-carbon dry cell. Itself effectively an evolution of the Leclanché wet cell.

From there zinc-carbon dry cells got replaced with alkalines, which itself got mostly replaced by NiMH and Li-ion cells. Despite more than a hundred years between the electrochemical cell that [Clive] featured in his video and today’s batteries, it’s clear that this wet cell was quite literally just the Victorian-era equivalent of an alkaline AA cell.

Much like radio operators being encouraged to use the least possible amount of power to make a contact, chemists have a similar rule encouraging using the least amount of materials in experiments. Not only is this rooted in economics, but in safety as well; if something goes wrong it’s generally good if there’s not excess amounts of reactants. With modern techniques, though, it’s possible to bring experimental chemistry down to incredibly small scales, and [Marb’s lab] found that they needed a custom built still for these new, diminutive experiments.

The first step is to build the heating component of the still. This is provided with a few custom aluminum parts for the base and a pair of heaters originally meant for 3D printers, with the assembled unit wrapped in insulation. The heater accomodates a 25 mL round-bottom flask. Temperature control of the heating mantle is provided by a controller mounted to a DIN rail which receives power from a 24V power supply, and an additional temperature probe is added to measure the temperature of the distillate. A test run with water shows the small still quickly and efficiently evaporating the water up to a condenser.

Although building a still doesn’t have to be technically difficult, building something this small that’s effective and safe is a bit more challenging than a backyard moonshining operation. Scaling chemical reactions down can often be a challenge but is possible with the right mindset and equipment. We’ve seen miniaturization of many things that we might not have expected including hydrogen production, aluminum smelting, and even the construction of a microscope.