Urine: The Hydrogen Fuel of the Future?
Could this be what the future of fuel looks like?
Pee. What can’t it do? From its reputable use as a fertilizer to questionable use as a hangover cure, urine has way more uses than you might imagine (or even want to know in the first place). Seriously. Some people even claim drinking it makes you healthier. Sounds completely quack to me, but what do I know?
Actually. Scratch that. This I know: drinking your own pee is universally questionable behavior.
But in the realm of interesting uses for your own bodily fluids, using urine as a source of hydrogen to power the cars of the future is a serious undertaking and based on completely sound science.
- » See also: Copenhagen Opens First Hydrogen Fueling Station, Unveils Fleet of Fuel Cell Cars
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People have known for a long time that you can generate hydrogen easily by running a current through water to split it into its component parts — oxygen and hydrogen — using a process called electrolysis. The problem is that the amount of energy needed to split the water is relatively large and the materials required are very expensive (although last year some MIT scientists created a brand new cheap catalyst that they say changes all that).
Urine to the rescue. Now some researchers at Ohio University have found that urine makes a much better starting point for generating hydrogen than water. The hydrogen found in urine is bonded much more loosely than in water. So loose, in fact, that by using simple and cheap materials hydrogen can be generated from urine using 1/3 of the voltage needed to make hydrogen from water.
The researchers see a much wider application for this technology in wastewater treatment plants by generating hydrogen while treating the waste simultaneously.
The Ohio University researchers are not alone in their quest for “gold.” Last month we reported on an entry into the Automotive X-Prize that uses urine as its source of hydrogen. Dubbed “ZeroFuel,” the team’s concept seems very similar to the Ohio University researchers approach. Perhaps they should be working together?
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
Image Credit: FaceMePLS’s Flickr Photostream. Used under a Creative Commons License.
MIT has a new catalyst, when used in Solar collectors produces H2 and O2 from sunlight - can pee speed this up? Can nuclear/electric plants now furnish cheap and abundant H2 and O2 from night-time surplus, to be fed to fuel cells to heat my house? run my car? flatten daytime demand curves? be transported loss free to more remote demand-locations, like my cottage? farms? building sites? camping grounds? Can we stop peeing and shiiteing in our lakes and streams, bio-gas the solids, and radiate them to safety for topsoil replacement? Is there really a better way to handle things ? Is importing O.P.E.C. and Saudis oil the only realistic and economical way to go? Are we facing paradigm shifts in our society that even we, the mighty American breed cannot adapt quickly and intelligently to? Is Asia going to pass us by? Does India really have more folk with IQ’s over 130 than we have people?Is energy a significant problem in respect to this? the Asian takeover if the Industrial world from us? Do we have fuel choices or are we on our last desperate run to “Third Worldom” believing capitalist advertising propagandists and big oil influences even as the coffin door slams down on our fingers! America! Wake up! Embrace the new, forsake the old! Move into the Hydrogen future, You are not being offered a choice here! These are the fingers of the kind hand of survival for fewer of us than we would like, and must be grasped, as much as this idea - The “American Dream” is dead and gone! Time to move on!
what will it smell like? at least recovered restaurant oil might smell like donuts or fries.