Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars?

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 8, 2009 @06:43AM from the use-every-part-of-the-animal dept.

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."

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Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-07-08 06:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

Only if they relax the drunk-driving laws. I don't see any other way the economics can work.
Re:New waste recycle plants? by Rei · 2009-07-08 07:16 · 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...

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