Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars?

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."

Re:Uh, the chemistry

[adonoman]

It only works that way in a self-sustaining reaction (one that produces enough energy to keep itself going). In this case, the hydrogen is being used to store energy, so the process is going to require input energy the whole time. They're taking from a lower energy state and pushing it up to a higher energy state so that at a future time, you can add in that bit of activation and let the reaction go, giving you energy in the process. It''s like pushing a rock up the hill - when you get it to the top, you can use all that stored energy just by giving the rock a little tap and letting it roll down. The advantage of using urea over water as a source of hydrogen, is that with urea, less energy is required to separate out the hydrogen. It's like starting pushing the rock from halfway up the hill.

Re:Way Cool

[BronsCon]

My penis is a fucking/boring tool.

Re:I know someone who will save our Earth

[Dunbal]

My wife is going to be the Energy SuperHeroine. She has to pee about 20 times a day.

      Either your wife has a small or irritable bladder, or she drinks a lot of water. In either case it's not going to help. If she has a small bladder she will be peeing all the time, but her total daily volume of urine will be within normal limits. If she drinks a lot of water, her urine volume will be above average, but the actual concentration of urea in her urine will be less.

      Sorry to burst your bubble.

      On the other hand, we doctors know that red meat and other protein rich foods - dairy products, eggs, etc - will substantially increase your production of urea (this is after all how the body gets rid of excess nitrogen produced when amino acids from proteins are turned into other stuff like sugars, fats, etc). So perhaps finally we'll be able to imprison all the snobbish vegans. Everyone will be forced to eat red meat and cheese all the time, and promptly die of heart attacks at 40, solving both the energy and the social security crises in one fell swoop.

Re:New waste recycle plants?

[Zalbik]

really don't understand why this hasn't caught on more. Electric vehicles only reduce dependence on oil, they do nothing for the environment as we simply replace the refining of oil to gas, with the refining of some other fuel and then burn it (coal to electric). In fact, let me go look up that post I wrote a long time ago, brb...

The idea is that we have already made significant headway in the development of environmentally friendly power plants (i.e. carbon sequestering, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, etc.). Environmentally friendly cars are still in their infancy. Solving both problems in parallel is much more sensible than developing completely green power plants and still having cars that burn fossil fuels.

Re:New waste recycle plants?

[DaleGlass]

First, electric vehicles are more efficient, and need less energy for the same result.

Second, that electricity can come from any source. Some sources are cleaner than others.

Third, this centralizes production of power for cars. Instead of millions of small inefficient engines engines, you have thousands of huge and quite efficient power plants, which are also easier to regulate and to make cleaner.

Re:New waste recycle plants?

[Rei]

Why? It's from Hamlet (from the "To be or not to be" soliloquy -- the same place where we get the phrase "shuffled off this mortal coil" and a couple other phrases). Actually, the original is "there's the rub"; "therein lies" is just a less abrupt way of putting it. "Rub" in this context means "obstacle" [reference.com] (definition #14).