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."
Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if they relax the drunk-driving laws. I don't see any other way the economics can work.
The problem.... (Score:1, Insightful)
New waste recycle plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Energy balance of using urea? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see two possible problems with this. Urea is a product of amino acid metabolization, in other words, protein breakdown. Somehow I think it'd take quite a lot of energy to provide the protein to provide the urea.
Second problem, what're the reaction by-products? That wasn't clear in the article. If nitrogen gas is a by-product, that basically reverses the very energy intensive process of fixing nitrogen. We'd be better off using the urea as fertilizer to grow food rather than as fuel.
--PM
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of what's on the Internet qualifies, so I'd say that's a safe bet.
Re:The problem.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't just getting the hydrogen, its storing and using it safely. This might make hydrogen dirt cheap, but it still doesn't really solve the problems that make hydrogen cars unworkable.
Are you the sort who gets up in the morning, observes that you are out of clean shirts, and trots off to do a quick load of laundry. But then say... "Hey, the problem here isn't just getting dressed, the car needs a boost and I can't remember where my wallet is." And then you lie back down in bed in defeat. The whole getting to work problem is just unworkable. ;)
When you have two problems and you solve one of them I'd call that progress.
The most common element in the universe is hydrogen. It will pay off in the long run to master using it for energy.
Re:Just 0.037 Volts... (Score:5, Insightful)
When did they make volts a unit of energy?
Another stupid analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
Urea will never be a significant energy source. Think about it, cars use far more energy than the total caloric intake of an animal (human or otherwise) per day. Yet WASTE product is supposed to supply all the energy needs of our vehicles?
Secondly, this would directly compete with our food sources even more so than biodiesel already does. Urea is a nitrogen fertilizer source that is in short supply. We already manufacture most of the world's urea supply from atmospheric nitrogen using up energy (mostly natural gas) in the process.
So in short, while this research may be of practical and academic interest, it is not going to usher in a new era of piss-powered cars.
A case of made up again. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right about the energy balance for the wrong reasons, and also the article submitter has screwed up. No one is suggesting urine, which the journalist made up on the spot, and which fails the capacity requirement to boot. The pure industrial chemical urea is mostly produced synthetically from ammonia and carbon dioxide, and ammonia is made from hydrogen and nitrogen. Hydrogen is currently produced mostly from natural gas and similar sources, which means it won't solve anything, and the carbon dioxide should be non-fossil also for the carbon cycle to be closed. In summary, what we have here is another way to produce synthetic fuel from natural gas or carbonaceous masses like coal or organic matter. The good thing is that the fuel precursor is noncombustible; the bad is that it's completely unproven and even hypothetical, and its energy density is not known.
Re:Just 0.037 Volts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Really, how many gallons a day do you piss? Considder then that urea is only a fractional percentage of that pee. (about 95% of typical urine is water, the rest is a combination of mostly urea as well as other contaminants removed by the kidneys).
I'd have to piss somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 gallons a day to have enough fuel just to handle my daily commute. Then there's the energy loss seperating the urea at the water treatment plant, hooking houses on septic up to sewers to collect the additional urine (about 35% of the country doens't have a sewer), then transport of the seperated urea to an H2 processing plant, and THEN, what do you plan to DO with the H2? We can't afford to run it in our cars... (current fuel cells cost about $750,000 once you take away the government subsidies. They THINK they can make em for about $100,000 in 15-20 years....
Re:New waste recycle plants? (Score:5, Insightful)
And therein lies the rub. It's way too expensive and inefficient to recover from natural sources (it makes up ~2% of urine, mixed in with ~3% "other"), so we make it synthetically from ammonia. Which is made via the Haber process. Which in turn use coal or natural gas as feedstocks. Gee, that's really going to solve the efficiency problem right there...
Re:Just 0.037 Volts... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:New waste recycle plants? (Score:1, Insightful)
If the energy use in making the urea industrially is greater than the energy gain from extracting the hydrogen from urea, then you're back at square one. I can't verify that this is the case necessarily, but it is one thing to consider.
Which puts it in direct competition with ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fertiliser production. Also using the Haber-Bosch process with obvious implications for the cost of food vs fuel.
There are 4 big things we can do to save the world, and dependency on oil.
1: Stop throwing away 60% of our energy through "waste" heat. Which is pretty much what every electricity generating plant does.
2: Stop using 50% of our 40% efficient electricity to move heat around... See air conditioning.
3: Stop using 17% efficient vehicles to move us around.
4: Stop generating artificial fertilisers.
The solutions?
1: District Heating and District cooling.
2: Insulation, thermal mass. District cooling and/or evaporative cooling.
3: Walk. Battery electric vehicles for relatively short journeys, personal rapid transit for intermediate and rail for longer journeys.
4: Stop discharging human waste into the ocean. Compost it to destroy pathogens and start using it as fertiliser. The current methods simply move NPK from the land to the ocean.
p.s. I don't expect any of this to actually happen. Humans are stupid animals and it's easier to kill others who threaten resource consumption than it is to change.
Re:Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars? (Score:2, Insightful)