The use of CaCl
2 (imho) is
safer than the NaCl method, i think i read somewhere that if you dont keep shaking up your NaCl the acid creates a "mound" of Na
2SO
4 which the acid will not react to and you can get a build up of the acid on this then once theres enough to roll of this mound of product salt there can be a massive reaction of gas generation.
The CaCl
2 method is good as its only absorbing water, and if the top few mm of CaCl
2 gets to max absorbance the water will pass through until it hits the next few mm which are water free, hence no buildup... safer...
is that right or as usual am i rambling on about crap?
In your post you said just CaCl2 and conc. HCl.
You dont need h2so4 in this setup?
No.
CaCl2 will dry the wet HCl to gas and be done with it, the only need for H2SO4 is for the NaCl generator.
Look at rhodiums site for the gas generator setup document.