Science Invents a Way to Power Cars With Your Pee

[Alar]

This is OLD AS HELL.

I saw this on tomorrows world like 8 years ago.

Technologies like these either never get picked up by someone with the money and power to put it to use, or it DOES get picked up but gets shelved so it cannot destroy the global oil market.

 

[Quazimofo]

Too bad hydrogen is rather shit when it comes to powering engines, compared to..You know..Gasoline?

yeah but we dont have an efficient method of creating more raw petroleum, so make do with what you have ya know? and we make piss tons of..... well piss daily, so im sure quantity can make up for quality until tech develops to allow hydrogen to be closer to gas's efficiency.

i think a stalin quote fits here nicely (no im not a communist, my european history teacher is, so i hear this shit). but back to the quote
"quantity is a quality all its own"

Yeah, piss might be free, but electrolysis sure isn't. It still takes a huge amount of effort to make hydrogen out of pee, and even if the raw component is "free" (like water, for instance. I'm guessing it's more effective to make hydrogen out of piss than water. Did you know that the first car-engine was based on hydrogen distilled from water? No? Well that's because the major petrol-corporations bought up the patents and then shut down the research and production), it's still isn't free to produce, nor is it very effective. One of the main reasons petrol > water or electricity is that is is simply more "bang for the buck".
More of petrol's effectiveness goes towards actually driving the engine, instead of being just "wasted energy" in form of excess energy like heat and sound. And oh, even tho electric cars in some cases are more effective, it takes a shitload bigger storage-capacity in the form of a battery than it takes for the same amount of efficiency when it comes to a fuel-tank.
True, this will probably change, if we ever put some research-money into more effective batteries, or tanks that can hold hydrogen, so all and all I'm glad they are researching it.

Just don't think that it will be any major change soon. Not before the oil runs out.

well yeah of course, oil is making too much money and it still serves our purposes for the moment, so until it gets to a situation near that of fallout, no major change will happen. there's no real debate here, we both just saying hydrogen MAY be the next big thing, since it isn't too far fetched.
really, all i hope is decent tech can come out to prevent the nuclear war of fallout scale before the oil gets that low, and im glad we are taking good steps in the right direction.

 

[Realitycrash]

Too bad hydrogen is rather shit when it comes to powering engines, compared to..You know..Gasoline?

yeah but we dont have an efficient method of creating more raw petroleum, so make do with what you have ya know? and we make piss tons of..... well piss daily, so im sure quantity can make up for quality until tech develops to allow hydrogen to be closer to gas's efficiency.

i think a stalin quote fits here nicely (no im not a communist, my european history teacher is, so i hear this shit). but back to the quote
"quantity is a quality all its own"

Yeah, piss might be free, but electrolysis sure isn't. It still takes a huge amount of effort to make hydrogen out of pee, and even if the raw component is "free" (like water, for instance. I'm guessing it's more effective to make hydrogen out of piss than water. Did you know that the first car-engine was based on hydrogen distilled from water? No? Well that's because the major petrol-corporations bought up the patents and then shut down the research and production), it's still isn't free to produce, nor is it very effective. One of the main reasons petrol > water or electricity is that is is simply more "bang for the buck".
More of petrol's effectiveness goes towards actually driving the engine, instead of being just "wasted energy" in form of excess energy like heat and sound. And oh, even tho electric cars in some cases are more effective, it takes a shitload bigger storage-capacity in the form of a battery than it takes for the same amount of efficiency when it comes to a fuel-tank.
True, this will probably change, if we ever put some research-money into more effective batteries, or tanks that can hold hydrogen, so all and all I'm glad they are researching it.

Just don't think that it will be any major change soon. Not before the oil runs out.

well yeah of course, oil is making too much money and it still serves our purposes for the moment, so until it gets to a situation near that of fallout, no major change will happen. there's no real debate here, we both just saying hydrogen MAY be the next big thing, since it isn't too far fetched.
really, all i hope is decent tech can come out to prevent the nuclear war of fallout scale before the oil gets that low, and im glad we are taking good steps in the right direction.

Honestly, I'd rather we dump our money researching cold fusion. But hey, hydrogen still might work.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Writing our names in the snow or making lemon snow cones for our friends will no longer be time honoured traditions. I wonder how much beer you will need to drink to fill your tank?

Quite a lot. Beer will increase the H2O volume of your urine however it is urea (the yellow bit) that is generating the power. This is created from breaking down amino acids found in proteins. Bottom line: drinking beer doesn't help, you need to eat a steak dinner.

Unless they invent a steak-based beer. Japan probably already has it.

 

[Quazimofo]

Too bad hydrogen is rather shit when it comes to powering engines, compared to..You know..Gasoline?

yeah but we dont have an efficient method of creating more raw petroleum, so make do with what you have ya know? and we make piss tons of..... well piss daily, so im sure quantity can make up for quality until tech develops to allow hydrogen to be closer to gas's efficiency.

i think a stalin quote fits here nicely (no im not a communist, my european history teacher is, so i hear this shit). but back to the quote
"quantity is a quality all its own"

Yeah, piss might be free, but electrolysis sure isn't. It still takes a huge amount of effort to make hydrogen out of pee, and even if the raw component is "free" (like water, for instance. I'm guessing it's more effective to make hydrogen out of piss than water. Did you know that the first car-engine was based on hydrogen distilled from water? No? Well that's because the major petrol-corporations bought up the patents and then shut down the research and production), it's still isn't free to produce, nor is it very effective. One of the main reasons petrol > water or electricity is that is is simply more "bang for the buck".
More of petrol's effectiveness goes towards actually driving the engine, instead of being just "wasted energy" in form of excess energy like heat and sound. And oh, even tho electric cars in some cases are more effective, it takes a shitload bigger storage-capacity in the form of a battery than it takes for the same amount of efficiency when it comes to a fuel-tank.
True, this will probably change, if we ever put some research-money into more effective batteries, or tanks that can hold hydrogen, so all and all I'm glad they are researching it.

Just don't think that it will be any major change soon. Not before the oil runs out.

well yeah of course, oil is making too much money and it still serves our purposes for the moment, so until it gets to a situation near that of fallout, no major change will happen. there's no real debate here, we both just saying hydrogen MAY be the next big thing, since it isn't too far fetched.
really, all i hope is decent tech can come out to prevent the nuclear war of fallout scale before the oil gets that low, and im glad we are taking good steps in the right direction.

Honestly, I'd rather we dump our money researching cold fusion. But hey, hydrogen still might work.

its good to have options

 

[Phishfood]

Unless they invent a steak-based beer. Japan probably already has it.

I'd buy it

 

[The_Yeti]

Hey water company? how about you pay me to flush.

 

[CrystalShadow]

This leads me to ask, how does the power output of an H-cell compare to the electricity required to fill it?

Ah, but you're looking at it the wrong way. You won't run hydrogen through a fuel cell to produce electricity to harvest hydrogen from the urine. Even if it was somehow net effective in production, you wouldn't have a lot left over for running the motors. Or the through-put would exhaust both your tanks real quick, either or.

But, say you do what a lot of hybrids already do: run the motors as generators to supply braking force. Instead of charging a battery, get some hydrogen from the storage tank.

I do wonder how many miles could be added per fill-up with such a method. That, and what exactly you would do with all the ammonia and other contaminates in the urine.

EDIT: Also, while it is true that the power density of hydrogen is laughably low compared to gasoline (as is just about any power density...) there is research under way on methods to vastly increase storage capacity of hydrogen without using high-pressure tanks.

I actually wasn't thinking of using the power from the cell to produce more fuel. My question was more, wouldn't it be more efficient to not produce the hydrogen, and just run the car electrically?

I had forgotten about recouping energy through regenerative braking, though.

This has already been answered I think, but the problem there is with batteries.

One of the most impressive electric cars at the moment is the Tesla Roadster.

But while that has a range of 211 miles (officially), the battery weighs 500 kg (1100 pounds or so), which is 1/3 the weight of the entire car.
Recharging the battery to full capacity also takes 16 hours. (though specialised charging equipment can get the latest model down to 3.5 hours apparently, from standard 240 volt system, though it does need 70 amps of current to do so. The older model had a 'quickcharge' system that required having access to 3 phase 415 volt industrial power supplies.)

Of course, the charging issue could be overcome with some infrastructure and standardisation, since if it were designed right, it'd be plausible to swap out the entire battery. (The Tesla S is apparently designed to make it possible to replace the battery in about 5 minutes. But that won't matter much if you can't get hold of a charged replacement easily.)

The real problem here is energy density.

By weight, the best batteries we currently have have about 1/100th the energy density of Gasoline.

That's somewhat counteracted by a gasoline engine being only around 35% efficient, while an electric motor is easily 90%+ efficiency.

But that still means, weight for weight, gas will get you 30 times the distance of a battery.
(With the added complication that you can't 'refuel' a battery)

Hydrogen presents a similar problem. We don't have the ability to store enough hydrogen in a small enough volume to come anywhere near the energy density of petrol. Especially not in a way that's actually safe.

And the options for using hydrogen as a fuel are using it in a fuel cell to generate electricity (then using that to power an electric motor), or using it in an engine closer in design to an internal combustion engine. (Which is less efficient than the electric motor, but might still be more effective than the combination of a fuel cell & electric motor).

All in all it's a tricky problem. Though personally, the solution to either one has effect beyond cars.

I mean, think about it; If batteries were as effective as petrol for storing energy, a laptop computer could run for 300 hours on the size of battery they currently make use of...
That's 2 weeks or so.
(Granted, the charging time afterward would probably be a nightmare, but that's a secondary problem.)

 

[Innegativeion]

We're approaching mass transport powered by liquid human waste.

That's it, fuck super intelligent AI, I believe we've just now officially hit the technological singularity.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

This sounds like something that'll be more easier for men to use. lol