New Technology Produces Hydrogen from Urine

EnergyBoom:

Imagine a cheap and plentiful resource that could one day fuel our cars and clean up wastewater at the same time. Dr. Gerardine Botte, Director of the Electrochemical Engineering Research Library (EERL) at Ohio University, has developed a cost-effective method that produces cheap hydrogen from urine.

Read the whole story: EnergyBoom

Comments

[rshrink]

I prefer yellow cake.

[research]

Wonderful!

Waste BioFUels can supply ALL our fuel needs, and a log of our energy and fertilizer needs.

"1.23V is needed to split H20 molecules. Botte’s method uses less energy than it takes to extract hydrogen from water. Simply put: by placing the inexpensive electrode into urine and applying current, hydrogen is released."

This could actually be done at the toilet, it's so simple. I wonder it it can be done with the liquids after it reaches the sewage plant. Powers the plants, then convert the solids with BioChar, into fertilizer, energy and BioFuels.

Close the loop.

see my profile for details and links.

[Ceregene]

Must be the beer...........

[BannedNBoston]

Hydrogen clumps together when it sits.
Its a poor fuel.
Separate water into HYDROXY GAS monatomic hho
it can be burned in propane appliances and autos too.

[leduck]

again..., to solve the netorpy crisis, you need to focus on replacing depleting primary sources of energy with other primary sources of energy (preffereably, a renewable source of primary energy.

Hydroxy gas is not a primary source of energy. Some things can improve our situation by using less energy, w/o solving our long term problem. Like hybrids, The prius is great, it generates electricity when you break, but it does not mine for oil, coal or natural gas, nor does it provide a renewable source of energy.

hydroxy gas does not solve Peak Oil

[leduck]

this is junk science

it solves nothing because hydrogen is not a primary source of energy. It just stores energy. Therefore, hydrogen can never solve the energy.entropy problem or PEAK OIL.
This theoretical car wouldn't even run on urine but actually electricity that is generated, right now, mostly from coal and natural gas. In other words, it's a car that runs mostly on coal, or natural gas.

If there is ever a hydrogen economy, first will have to solve the energy/entropy crisis.

[alvdh1]

Gee, what a shortsighted, irresponsible and nonsensical abberation of human thought locked inside the box of the status quo. The first thought that came to mind would include the local sports bar putting roof top solar panels on the joint while simultaneously disconnecting the wastelines to the urinals and running the urea straight to a storage tank. From there, the owner can start generating hydrogen gas at the crack of dawn utilizing the solar pv panels and electrolosis to produce hydrogen gas to be stored in a pressurized tank to be burned during the evening in his microturbine. After the owner gets his ROI, he just built in a markup on his beer sales.

Your are right. Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be produced by excess capacity from wind, solar, coal, natural gas, biomass, tidal, wind, geothermal and thermal gradient power plants. It can also be produced at night when peak demand is low except from solar. It can be produced as a way to level power plant demand instead of building up for peak demand which is highly inefficient. By the way, my example above was a joke, but the latter is not.

[JakeAZ]

Duh. Urine was used to manufacture gunpowder centuries ago. Google "saltpeter" or read all about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate

[LeftLeanWing]

Think about how much energy can be harvested from the local Pub after $3.00 a Pitcher -- beer night .

[Treehuggindirtworshiper]

Nice to see "The Manaquin Piss" is still dressing up for the press. I walked across Brussels to see him. He is so much more impressive in print. LOL!

[quiviran]

So the molecule starts out a 4 Hydrogen and 2 Nitrogen atoms. Does the electrolysis split off all 4 Hydrogen atoms? Do the 2 Nitrogen atoms oxidize and become Nitrous Oxide? It so, that might explain why people start giggling when they talk about this.

[JakeAZ]

Or maybe they have some OTHER manifestation of physiological reactions in the NO pathways..... ;)

[HeWhoReads]

An interesting idea.

I can't help but wonder....they say that biofuel vehicles sometimes smell like french fries. So this would smell like...

[rshrink]

I'd rather run a car on yellow cake.

[JScott]

Hmm seems like they had this in the sci fi book 'The World Inside' folks in it pead and pooped in separate plumbing fixtures, the pee was used to power the monad urbmons (google it)

[pokemon]

Nothing special in the least. The tech has been around for a long time, this is just using the salts in the urine as the electrolyte. I have the same thing on my car to help burn fuel at higher temps, I use KOH as mine and the excess power from the vehicle to power the unit.

I hate when they come out and say heres this new tech.. so full of it. Old Tech.

[amoosefloats]

people will be siphoning porta potties at phish shows for fuel

[Hiphopcrates]

Why not turn feces into politicians? I guess no conversion is necessary!

[quiviran]

It would be some sort of recursive process. *hole produces feces, which is itself another *hole. Unfortunately, it seems to be growing monotonically, the supply of *holes is every increasing.