1. Why this guide exists
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
There's a lot of noise around hydrogen right now — inhalers, water bottles, bath systems, each with its own claims, acronyms, and marketing language. Some of it is genuinely useful. Some of it is just noise dressed up as science.
This guide isn't trying to sell you on hydrogen as a concept. It's trying to do something narrower and, we think, more useful: explain what's actually happening inside these devices, in plain language, using the two numbers that actually mean something — purity and flow rate — instead of the adjectives that usually surround them.
We build hydrogen inhalation, water, and bathing devices. So this isn't a neutral document in the sense that we have no stake in the outcome — we do. But it is neutral in a more important sense: everything in here is written so it would hold up whether you buy from us, from someone else, or not at all. If a claim can't be measured, we've tried not to make it.
2. What molecular hydrogen actually is
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
Start with water — H₂O, two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom. Run an electrical current through it in a properly designed electrolyzer, and the water splits apart: hydrogen gas collects at one electrode, oxygen at the other.
The technology used to do this varies. PEM — proton exchange membrane — electrolysis uses a thin membrane between the two electrodes that keeps the hydrogen and oxygen physically separated as they're produced. That membrane is what makes it possible to generate a hydrogen stream on its own, without oxygen mixed in, and to measure exactly how pure that stream is.
Purity is usually expressed as a percentage — what fraction of the gas stream is actually H₂, versus water vapor or trace impurities. Our electrolysis-stage spec is 99.991%, measured at the stack, at the point the gas is generated and separated by the membrane.
Flow rate is the second number, usually given in millilitres per minute (mL/min) — how much gas is being produced and delivered per minute of operation. Purity tells you how clean the gas is; flow rate tells you how much of it you're actually getting. Neither number alone tells the full story — a very pure stream at a very low flow rate delivers less gas overall than a slightly less pure stream at a much higher flow rate.
Every chapter after this one comes back to these two numbers. If you take one thing from this guide, take this: when evaluating any hydrogen device, ask for purity percentage and flow rate in mL/min, measured at the point of generation. Everything else is downstream of those two figures.
3. Two ways to breathe it: separated H₂ or combined H₂/O₂
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
There are two different approaches to how molecular hydrogen gas is delivered by inhalation, and they come from two different engineering logics — not a right answer and a wrong one.
The case for a separated, concentrated H₂ stream is about measurement. Independent researchers studying inhaled hydrogen — including dosimetry work modeling the physiology of inhaled hydrogen concentration and flow rate — focus on defining exactly how much H₂ reaches each breath. Diluting the hydrogen stream with any other gas makes that figure harder to define and harder to hold consistent session to session. This is also why any manufacturer publishing a genuine purity figure, rather than an undefined "gas output," is almost always describing a separated H₂ stream — it's the only version of the number that's independently measurable.
The case for combined delivery comes from how electrolysis naturally works: splitting water produces hydrogen and oxygen together at a fixed 2:1 ratio, and some systems deliver that combined output as-generated, without a separation step.
Neither approach is "the correct one." Dose-measurement research asks how much hydrogen is needed for a measurable, defined concentration. Combined-gas delivery asks how to deliver what electrolysis naturally produces, as generated. Choosing to separate the gas doesn't imply the combined stream is somehow incomplete — it's a delivery decision, not a verdict on which is right.
This is why our machines offer both as selectable modes: hydrogen alone, or the combined 2:1 stream via Y-connector. Across the range, pure H₂ output runs from 600 mL/min on the QY-A900 up to 2,000 mL/min on the QY-A3000, with the W30/W10 offering a selectable tier between 667 and 1,400 mL/min. The purity figure we publish — 99.99%+ across the range — describes the hydrogen at the point it's generated and separated at the membrane. Which mode you choose to breathe afterward is entirely up to you.
For a deeper treatment of this trade-off, see our companion guide on hydrogen alone vs. combined H₂/O₂.
4. Hydrogen water: what dissolving gas into water means
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
Hydrogen water is a different delivery method entirely — instead of breathing the gas directly, it's dissolved into water and consumed that way. The relevant number here isn't purity or flow rate, but concentration, measured in parts per billion (ppb) — how much dissolved H₂ is actually present in the water at the point of drinking.
Concentration isn't fixed once generated — it decays over time as dissolved hydrogen gas naturally escapes into the air, faster in an open container than a sealed one. That's a property of the gas, not a flaw in any particular device, and it's why "how long after generation are you drinking it" matters as much as the number on the spec sheet.
Our water-mode devices are built around this: the W30 and W10, in water mode, deliver ≥3,000 ppb dissolved hydrogen at an output of ≥350 mL/min. A portable 300 mL bottle format produces 3,000–5,000 ppb per cycle. A separate accessory — a nano-bubble diffuser bar — raises dissolved concentration from a baseline of roughly 278 ppb up to 1,200–1,500 ppb within about 100 seconds, and holds above 1,000 ppb for 24 hours or more, useful where a longer-duration stable concentration matters more than a single high peak.
As with inhalation, the number to ask for — regardless of brand — is dissolved H₂ in ppb, ideally specified alongside how soon after generation that figure was measured. See also our companion piece on how long hydrogen water lasts.
5. Hydrogen bathing: what's different about a bath machine
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
A bath machine solves a different engineering problem than an inhaler or a water generator: how do you get dissolved hydrogen into a full bath's worth of water, continuously, rather than a single glass or a single breath?
The WZ-1 does this through hydrogenated-water delivery rather than gas diffusion — water is electrolyzed, hydrogen is dissolved into it at the membrane, and oxygen is vented off rather than delivered into the bath. The result is delivered to the bath at 3,750 mL/min, reaching a manufacturer-confirmed dissolved concentration of over 2,000 ppb in the water reaching the bath.
Because this is a continuous-delivery architecture rather than a single-dose one, the relevant comparison point for a bath system isn't a snapshot ppb figure alone, but the combination of concentration and delivery rate — how much hydrogenated water is entering the bath, and at what concentration, sustained over the length of a session.
6. Reading a spec sheet: the two numbers that matter
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
By now the pattern across inhalation, water, and bathing should be clear: each delivery method has its own primary number, and none of them are interchangeable.
- Inhalation: purity (%) and flow rate (mL/min), both measured at the point of generation.
- Water: dissolved concentration (ppb), and how soon after generation it was measured.
- Bathing: dissolved concentration (ppb) and delivery rate (mL/min) together, since it's a continuous rather than single-dose system.
A simple test for any spec sheet, on any device, from any brand: can the manufacturer give you the actual number, in the actual unit, measured at a stated point? If a listing leans on words like "high-output," "advanced," or a proprietary named "factor" instead of a number in ppb, %, or mL/min, that's worth asking about directly before comparing it to anything else.
7. Certifications: what they confirm, and what they don't
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
Certifications are useful, but it's worth being precise about what each one actually confirms — because none of them are a stand-in for the performance numbers above.
FCC Part 15 Subpart B is an electromagnetic-emissions compliance standard — it confirms a device doesn't produce interference beyond permitted limits for electronic equipment sold in the US. It says nothing about hydrogen output, purity, or concentration. (Note: this is correctly described as "FCC Part 15 Subpart B compliant" — not "FCC certified," which implies a different, broader authorization.)
ISO 9001 confirms a quality management system is in place for consistent manufacturing processes. ISO 13485 is the equivalent standard specific to medical device manufacturing quality systems — its presence reflects manufacturing discipline, not a claim that the product itself is a medical device.
CE marking confirms conformity with relevant EU health, safety, and environmental protection standards for the product category. RoHS confirms restriction of specific hazardous substances (lead, mercury, and others) in the materials used.
None of these certifications measure or confirm purity percentage, flow rate, or dissolved concentration — those numbers come from the manufacturer's own published specifications, which is exactly why Section 6's question ("can they give you the actual number?") matters independently of what badges appear on the box.
8. A note on terminology
Editorial content. No disease or treatment claims are made. Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices, not medical devices.
Measurement language in this space isn't always standardized. Some marketing describes gas output using terms that aren't tied to any independently defined unit — a named "factor" or proprietary descriptor rather than a percentage, a ppb figure, or a mL/min rate.
That's not necessarily dishonest, but it does mean the burden is on the reader to ask a simple follow-up question: what does this term actually measure, in what unit, and who else uses or verifies it? If the answer is "it's specific to this one brand," treat it as marketing language rather than a spec — useful as a name for a product, but not as a comparison point against anything else.
9. Who's behind this
Editorial content.
It's fair to ask who's actually making the claims in a guide like this, and why.
We're not a multi-level marketing company — no recruitment structure, no distributor tiers, no sign-up bonuses. You buy a machine at a transparent, published price, direct from us. Every machine is independently certified, and the documentation is published before you buy, not produced on request afterward: CE, FCC Part 15 Subpart B, RoHS, ISO 9001, and ISO 13485 — the quality management standard used by regulated medical device manufacturers.
This comes out of four decades of hands-on work in oxyhydrogen technology, starting well before "hydrogen wellness" was a category. In 1985, Peter Griffiths met Yull Brown — an engineer who spent decades demonstrating that oxyhydrogen, the gas produced by electrolysing water, behaved in ways worth taking seriously both as a combustion technology and, later, as the same underlying chemistry studied for its effects in the human body. Peter worked alongside him until Brown's death in 1998.
From there, the work went industrial: YBG Group International, applying oxyhydrogen combustion enhancement to industrial thermal systems — engineering work, not wellness marketing, with a ten-plant industrial rollout across seven Indian states achieving a verified 13% improvement in steam-to-fuel ratio measured across the fleet.
Molecular hydrogen's relevance to human health emerged from a separate, later body of research — same element, different application — studied in the peer-reviewed literature through the 2000s and 2010s. The engineering discipline built industrially translated directly into building properly specified consumer hydrogen equipment, rather than the loosely-specified machines that dominated the early consumer market.
That's the pathway this guide comes from: real engineering background, real certification, numbers you can check rather than adjectives you have to take on faith.
10. Glossary
- PEM (proton exchange membrane)
- An electrolysis method using a membrane to physically separate hydrogen and oxygen as they're generated, enabling a pure, separated H₂ stream.
- Alkaline electrolysis
- An electrolysis method that produces hydrogen and oxygen together, without a membrane separation step.
- Purity (%)
- The proportion of a gas stream that is actually H₂, versus water vapor or trace impurities, measured at the point of generation.
- Flow rate (mL/min)
- The volume of gas produced and delivered per minute.
- Dissolved concentration (ppb)
- Parts per billion of hydrogen gas dissolved into water, the relevant unit for hydrogen water and bathing applications.
- Closed-loop circulation
- A bath-machine architecture where water is continuously drawn, electrolyzed, and returned to the bath, rather than being dosed once.
11. Closing & further reading
That's the full picture, in the units that actually mean something: percentage, millilitres per minute, parts per billion. Whatever you choose to use — ours or anyone else's — asking for these numbers, measured at a stated point, is the one habit worth taking away from this guide.
Hydrogen Machines products are general wellness devices. They are not medical devices and are not registered, approved, or cleared as such by the TGA, FDA, or any other regulator. No disease, treatment, or therapeutic claims are made about them or about the research referenced on this page.