Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars? 313
thecarchik writes with this interesting excerpt: "It takes a lot of energy to split hydrogen out from the other atoms to which it binds, either in natural gas or water. Which means energy analysts are skeptical about the overall energy balance of cars fueled by hydrogen. Ohio University researcher Geraldine Botte has come up with a nickel-based electrode to oxidize (NH2)2CO, otherwise known as urea, the major component of animal urine. Because urea's four hydrogen atoms are less tightly bound to nitrogen than the hydrogen bound to oxygen in water molecules, it takes less energy to break them apart."
Urea? (Score:4, Funny)
first piss!
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Sperm and now urine? I'll take a guess and say the next article will be about crap.
Take that you punk kids! (Score:4, Funny)
Try pissing in my gas tank now!
Humm, if Bio Diesel Cars smell like French Fries (Score:5, Funny)
The cars powered by this will smell like Bourbon Street.
Way Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Cool. We burn our pee in the car, collect pure water from the tailpipe, drink the water and pee again.
Perpetual urination FTW.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll take a guess and say the next article will be about crap.
I suppose that will be a shitty article.
Re:Oh sure! (Score:1, Funny)
Don't worry. I'm sure you still can hang around the rest areas and make some money.
The only problem I see is that... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:New waste recycle plants? (Score:5, Funny)
Urea is a common component in a lot of industrial applications, notably cosmetics, soap and animal feed. No need to really source it from the sewer, industrial vats make this stuff every day.
Telling women what exactly "Urea" is in the ingredients of their makeup case is great fun...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea [wikipedia.org]
urinine (Score:5, Funny)
the fuel will be called urinine, because after a lot of beer, I'm way way past urin8
Re:urinine (Score:5, Funny)
My urine goes to 11.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll take a guess and say the next article will be about crap.
I suppose that will be a shitty article.
Now, now -- there's no need to get pissy about it.
Re:Just 0.037 Volts... (Score:3, Funny)
What they didn't tell you is that it takes about 33 times longer. They're not sure why, though.
Re:urinine (Score:5, Funny)
You guys should get together and form your own country. You can call it the Uri-nation.
Re:urinine (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:New waste recycle plants? (Score:1, Funny)
Telling women what exactly "Urea" is in the ingredients of their makeup case is great fun...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea [wikipedia.org]
I get the impression you don't get out much...;)
Re:Way Cool (Score:3, Funny)
So will we now refer to this loss of efficiency as "piss off"?
Re:Just 0.037 Volts... (Score:3, Funny)
I'd have to piss somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 gallons a day to have enough fuel just to handle my daily commute.
So that just gives you an(other) excuse to get very drunk at work. :)
It burns when I pee (Score:5, Funny)
Re:urinine (Score:1, Funny)
Why not just fly out and build a colony on Uranus?
These urine jokes are pissing me off. I'm going to go play my Nintendo Wii...
Re:The problem.... (Score:3, Funny)
Garrison Keillor once wrote
It is more worthy in the eyes of God if a writer makes three pages sharp and funny about the lives of geese than to make three hundred fat and flabby about God or the American people.
I'm not entirely certain you've succeeded in changing my opinion of hydrogen, but you've definitely made a change in my thinking.
Now if I could only find my car keys ...
Re:The problem.... (Score:5, Funny)
Every time I see people complaining about hydrogen storage, I find myself wondering what's so hard about it. You can store hydrogen fairly densely and easily by just attaching it to carbon atoms in a roughly 2:1 ratio. What's more, we already have the infrastructure in place to transport and use hydrogen that's been stored in this manner. And, even better, no high pressures, low temperatures, or special materials are required!
drinking and driving takes on a whole new meaning (Score:3, Funny)
If it works, it would be a very green... er... yellow solution.
Re:The problem.... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but that relys too much on using dangerously toxic carbon ....
.
I've heard that a few grams of carbon injected into a polar bear at 100m/s can kill it instantly.
.
Way to dangerous to use in cars and vehicles.
Surely... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It worked in Rome (Score:4, Funny)
I like the idea. Anything that involves aiming a stream of urine towards our national leaders is fine by me.
Re:Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The problem.... (Score:1, Funny)
I've heard that a few grams of carbon injected into a polar bear at 100m/s can kill it instantly. . Way to dangerous to use in cars and vehicles.
A few grams of lead can be injected into most animals with the same effect, it just depends on your aim.
Whole new meaning... (Score:0, Funny)
...to pissing on a spark plug. It may now do good.
Re:The problem.... (Score:4, Funny)
Now if I could only find my car keys ...
Have you tried Google [flickr.com]? They're doing some really amazing stuff with their engine lately.
Re:urinine (Score:4, Funny)
Why not just fly out and build a colony on Uranus?
It doesn't take a whiz to see why that's a piss-poor idea. Who leaked this idea to the press anyway? They're just trying to make a splash.
Re:Urea? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Just 0.037 Volts... (Score:3, Funny)
I don't care how much less it is... There is simply not enough urea made in the entire country on a daily bases to produce enough H2 for fuel for even a small city.
I disagree. There is easily 40 gallons of urine produced daily for each person on the continent. You're only taking into account human produced urea... but any urea would do. There's a lot of horses and cows in this country, they make it too... and if we could tap into the urea produced by rats... but this is assuming cows, horses and rats don't need it for their own cars.
Re:urinine (Score:3, Funny)