A team of sceintists at Ohio University appear to have developed a cost-effective method to produce hydrogen from urine. Subjecting urine to electrolysis with nickel-based electrodes seems to do the trick. The process appears to be cheaper than trying to produce hydrogen from water. The latter process requires 1.23V of potential across the electrodes, while the new process uses a tiny fraction of this at .037V. The team is currently working on coming up with a viable production process for commercial use. The cost-factor, along with the fact that burning hydrogen produces only water as a by-product, makes this a very attractive solution to man's quest for renewable, sustainable sources of energy. Also, since urine and urea are the most abundant and easily available forms of waste, localised power generation plants seem to be an ideal solution to power generation at farms, highway rest areas, etc..
While this is all and good, there are many vested interests who would rather this technology not see the light of day. The oil and natural gas industry and the electrical power generation companies immediately come to mind. Weren't it for the former, we would have seen advanced developments in electric car technology today. The latter might see this technology making them compete with their current customers in the power generation process. These industries have, in the past, bought up rights to technologies that threatened their business model and killed them off (10 part YouTube videos of the documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car?). Hopefully, these companies will see benefits to licensing this technology and roll it out as part of their business plans. After all, it can't be that difficult to use this process as a point-source generator to power their electrical grids.
The next couple of years will show us whether this technology catches on or gets killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment