world's energy problems solved!

[holy king]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...enage-girls-create-pee-powered-generator.html

Six hours' power for one trip to the bathroom! African teenage girls create 'pee-powered' generator

According to the Maker Faire blog, urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the urea into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen. The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.

The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas. This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator, and one litre of urine provides six hours of electricity.

yay?

 

[Borachio]

Six hours of electricity for what? What does this mean? Does it mean 6 kilowatt hours? Which would be very good indeed. Or is it more likely electricity to power a small light bulb for 6 hours. Less good.

See, the article doesn't say. That's the Daily Mail all over.

So, at a guess, nay.

I think you're better off peeing on the compost heap. No electricity, but nitrates returned to the soil would be more energy efficient, imo.

 

[TheLastOne36]

If it is 6 kilowatt hours that is great news.

Imagine this multiplied by the daily output of pee from most developed cities.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Uh, I don't think this makes sense.

If it were possible to make that much power with pee I think a research lab/Tesla/Edison/etc would've noticed years ago.

 

[dexters]

Interesting, I am still waiting for fusion power.

I am however unsure if I should pray to God or to god.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Uh, I don't think this makes sense.

If it were possible to make that much power with pee I think a research lab/Tesla/Edison/etc would've noticed years ago.

I think the more likely scenario would have been that Tesla would have noticed it and then Edison would have stolen the credit, that is pretty much how it usually went.

Needs more details. In addition, how much electricity does it take to power the various components that separate out the hydrogen and so forth. If it produces "6 hours" of electricity but requires 8 to power it, that's not so useful.

 

[Crezth]

Impossible. Only men from the first world can create science. Next.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Impossible. Only men from the first world can create science. Next.

That's not what I meant.

 

[innonimatu]

Let me guess, this news came from Nigeria by email and they're looking for "investors", right?

 

[GoodGame]

The interesting thing is of course how it does this:

urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the urea into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen.

 

[Winner]

Let me guess, this news came from Nigeria by email and they're looking for "investors", right?

Being reported by Daily Mail doesn't really increase my confidence in the factuality of these claims

 

[Old Hippy]

<nvm>

 

[W|M]

Being reported by Daily Mail doesn't really increase my confidence in the factuality of these claims

It wasn't just reported by the Daily Mail

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Bad article. Doesn't even say what kind of generator is used. I assume it's a fuel cell ?
My chemistry is a bit rusty, but the N-H bonds in urea should be weak enough that breaking them takes less energy than you would get back from burning hydrogen in a fuel cell.
I don't know how efficient it is, but as long as it makes use of a useless resource and works...

 

[Borachio]

That's my point. Urea is not a useless resource. It's a valuable fertilizer as is. It makes no sense to use it to produce electricity.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Useless was a poor choice of words. I meant readily awailable and renewable.
If you need electricity more than you need fertilizer it actually does make sense.

 

[Quackers]

it's taking the p***...