5 ms·

Unfortunately this looks to be mostly puff-press since we are dealing with a trifecta of minority-in-startupland (black, female, third-world country) This weir

Unfortunately this looks to be mostly puff-press since we are dealing with a trifecta of minority-in-startupland (black, female, third-world country) This weird contraption obviously uses more power to make hydrogen than it takes to run it. (Unless we are breaking some laws of physics?) I also see no mention of why using urine is better/worse than just using regular water. I am guessing because "Putting electricity in water generates hydrogen" is a less exciting title.

Luyt 14y ago
What's more, they're leading small (?) quantities of hydrogen into a metal container which (presumably) hasn't been vacuum-emptied beforehand, and so will after a while contain an air+hydrogen mixture, which while technically not oxyhydrogen, can still be ignited and make the metal gas tank explode like a pipe bomb.
- bathat 14y ago
  The first time I tried to write this comment, I was a little flip, because I'm not sure if you're trolling. Purging the container is very easy and requires nothing more than fire (which I think Africans have), water (I am sure they have this), a vessel for boiling the water (ditto), and a moment's thought (the linked article seems to suggest this is locally available too). It does not require any vacuum pumps. Step 1: Fill the vessel with water and start a fire Step 2: Fill the hydrogen container with water and invert (so the open side is down) Step 3: Hold the hydrogen container so that the opening is just below the surface of the water-to-be-boiled Step 4: Wait for water vapor to fill the hydrogen container. You now have a hydrogen container filled with water vapor and trace amount of atmospheric gases (the ones dissolved in the water and the ones adsorbed to the surface of the container). Since the urea electrolysis process produces only "dryish" hydrogen gas (the borax stage is used to remove water vapor from the as-produced hydrogen), it does not matter that the hydrogen container initially contains water vapor. At this point, the user can either cap the hydrogen container (which will produce a poor vacuum as the water condenses) or immediately start filling it with hydrogen. If conservation of borax is important (probably not, since I suspect that it can be dried fairly easily) one could prime the system by purging the hydrogen container with as-produced hydrogen to reduce the water content to an acceptable level before connecting it to the borax stage.
  - ars 14y ago
    The energy used in the fire is greater than the energy content of the unpressurized hydrogen in your container.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
whatshisface 14y ago
Urea is easier to break down than water. (0.37V as opposed to 1.2V) I'm no chemist, but I think that making an unstable chemical into a stable(er) one gives off energy. Also, if it wasn't a viable way to get energy than it wouldn't run at all. I don't see any wire going into a wall socket or anything, so I assume if they had it run for six hours like the article implies there has to be /something/ there. My main issue with it is having what looks like a gasoline generator run on hydrogen. Doing the necessary tweaks raises the technical complexity of this by an order of magnitude.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Uh, are you implying that urine is mostly urea? If that were the case, then our urine wouldn't be liquid, but more like bird poop. (The white part contains uric acid.) Urea is solid at room temp and is dissolved in water in our urine. Also, it's CO(NH2)2, so there is hydrogen there you don't have to get from water.
- DanBlake 14y ago
  Article mentions a charged electrolytic cell. Charged from outside power?
  - whatshisface 14y ago
    I did a ctrl-f for charged in the article and didn't see it. Where did it say that? If that is what it is, though, the entire thing is pretty much fake because a charged electrolytic cell is the same thing as a charged capacitor.
xoail 14y ago
Also may be because in places like Africa there's scarcity of water and urine which is a waste could be turned into hydrogen is still valuable.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
stcredzero 14y ago
> I also see no mention of why using urine is better/worse than just using regular water. I am guessing because "Putting electricity in water generates hydrogen" is a less exciting title. This is not electrolysis of water. In theory, they are decomposing urea to get their hydrogen, which uses far less energy. This is the same principle that would cause a hydrogen economy to be run off of natural gas. Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Or, in the words from Spinal Tap, there's often a thin line...
- ars 14y ago
  There isn't all that much urea in human urine - less than 3%.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    I point this out in another comment, but that's a good point I hadn't taken into account. Getting hydrogen from urea is better than electrolysis, but there's not that much urea. Still, if the entire village contributed, it might be enough to charge cell phones and run LED reading lights, which would still be a huge boon.
    - bradleyland 14y ago
      You still have to input energy to get hydrogen from urea, so why not just use that energy directly? The only good reason to extract hydrogen is for storage. For example, solar energy could be used to extract the hydrogen from urea, which could then be burned at night to continue to generate power. On it's own, any technology that requires extraction of hydrogen will result in a net loss. Sometimes a HUGE net loss.
      - ars 14y ago
        > You still have to input energy to get hydrogen from urea, so why not just use that energy directly? If you can do it efficiently enough, in theory electrolyzing urea then burning it to water (and nitrogen) is a net gain in energy.
sitkack 14y ago
If I could downvote you I would, but since I can't I will leave a meta-comment. Why is it important for you call out that they are in the set of three different minorities ? The entire tone of your post isn't constructive.
- eps 14y ago
  Not all posts need to be constructive to contribute to the discussion.
- DanBlake 14y ago
  I dont feel I am calling anyone out (except perhaps the website/author). I was trying to convey that this article is only getting traction /because/ of that. It is a deceptive invention that uses more power than it creates. This is contrary to the article which would have you believe if you piss in a can you could have 6 hours of generator power. Quite literally this device is nothing more than a fraud as it is currently written. Article title is : "These four African girls have created a pee-powered generator" 1: It is not a generator 2: You are mistaken. Its the article author who calls out front and center they are in 3 different minorities (see the title above) - I am simply responding to that.
HarryHirsch 14y ago
Amen to that. Sewage gas, on the contrary is used with great success to generate energy, both in the developing world and in the developed world. This urea-electrolysis thing, on the other hand, is plain weird, to generate hydrogen you must put energy in that you won't ever recover, thermodynamics tells you that, and hydrogen isn't something that's easily stored or transported.
DanBlake 14y ago
Basically, the article is made up. You would be hard pressed to run a generator for 6 hours on a gallon of gasoline. We are talking about urine here- 95% water.
- mikiem 14y ago
  The article does not say how much power the generator will produce over 6Hrs time.
  - DanBlake 14y ago
    You could not even idle for 6 hours with that generator in the pic. (On gasoline)
Geee 14y ago
The invention is about cheaper hydrogen production + wastewater treatment. The original paper http://www.suttonfruit.com/pics/urea_electrolysis.pdf http://www.suttonfruit.com/pics/urea_electrolysis.pdf They use nickel catalyst in the process and achieve 36% cheaper hydrogen production than water electrolysis. I don't know if the results explicitly means that it could be used as a sustainable power source. The original article doesn't mention that. The main point is cheaper way of producing hydrogen fuel while denitrificating waste water.

Luyt 14y ago

What's more, they're leading small (?) quantities of hydrogen into a metal container which (presumably) hasn't been vacuum-emptied beforehand, and so will after a while contain an air+hydrogen mixture, which while technically not oxyhydrogen, can still be ignited and make the metal gas tank explode like a pipe bomb.

bathat 14y ago
The first time I tried to write this comment, I was a little flip, because I'm not sure if you're trolling. Purging the container is very easy and requires nothing more than fire (which I think Africans have), water (I am sure they have this), a vessel for boiling the water (ditto), and a moment's thought (the linked article seems to suggest this is locally available too). It does not require any vacuum pumps. Step 1: Fill the vessel with water and start a fire Step 2: Fill the hydrogen container with water and invert (so the open side is down) Step 3: Hold the hydrogen container so that the opening is just below the surface of the water-to-be-boiled Step 4: Wait for water vapor to fill the hydrogen container. You now have a hydrogen container filled with water vapor and trace amount of atmospheric gases (the ones dissolved in the water and the ones adsorbed to the surface of the container). Since the urea electrolysis process produces only "dryish" hydrogen gas (the borax stage is used to remove water vapor from the as-produced hydrogen), it does not matter that the hydrogen container initially contains water vapor. At this point, the user can either cap the hydrogen container (which will produce a poor vacuum as the water condenses) or immediately start filling it with hydrogen. If conservation of borax is important (probably not, since I suspect that it can be dried fairly easily) one could prime the system by purging the hydrogen container with as-produced hydrogen to reduce the water content to an acceptable level before connecting it to the borax stage.
- ars 14y ago
  The energy used in the fire is greater than the energy content of the unpressurized hydrogen in your container.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

whatshisface 14y ago

Urea is easier to break down than water. (0.37V as opposed to 1.2V) I'm no chemist, but I think that making an unstable chemical into a stable(er) one gives off energy. Also, if it wasn't a viable way to get energy than it wouldn't run at all. I don't see any wire going into a wall socket or anything, so I assume if they had it run for six hours like the article implies there has to be /something/ there. My main issue with it is having what looks like a gasoline generator run on hydrogen. Doing the necessary tweaks raises the technical complexity of this by an order of magnitude.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Uh, are you implying that urine is mostly urea? If that were the case, then our urine wouldn't be liquid, but more like bird poop. (The white part contains uric acid.) Urea is solid at room temp and is dissolved in water in our urine. Also, it's CO(NH2)2, so there is hydrogen there you don't have to get from water.
DanBlake 14y ago
Article mentions a charged electrolytic cell. Charged from outside power?
- whatshisface 14y ago
  I did a ctrl-f for charged in the article and didn't see it. Where did it say that? If that is what it is, though, the entire thing is pretty much fake because a charged electrolytic cell is the same thing as a charged capacitor.

xoail 14y ago

Also may be because in places like Africa there's scarcity of water and urine which is a waste could be turned into hydrogen is still valuable.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

stcredzero 14y ago

> I also see no mention of why using urine is better/worse than just using regular water. I am guessing because "Putting electricity in water generates hydrogen" is a less exciting title. This is not electrolysis of water. In theory, they are decomposing urea to get their hydrogen, which uses far less energy. This is the same principle that would cause a hydrogen economy to be run off of natural gas. Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Or, in the words from Spinal Tap, there's often a thin line...

ars 14y ago
There isn't all that much urea in human urine - less than 3%.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  I point this out in another comment, but that's a good point I hadn't taken into account. Getting hydrogen from urea is better than electrolysis, but there's not that much urea. Still, if the entire village contributed, it might be enough to charge cell phones and run LED reading lights, which would still be a huge boon.
  - bradleyland 14y ago
    You still have to input energy to get hydrogen from urea, so why not just use that energy directly? The only good reason to extract hydrogen is for storage. For example, solar energy could be used to extract the hydrogen from urea, which could then be burned at night to continue to generate power. On it's own, any technology that requires extraction of hydrogen will result in a net loss. Sometimes a HUGE net loss.
    - ars 14y ago
      > You still have to input energy to get hydrogen from urea, so why not just use that energy directly? If you can do it efficiently enough, in theory electrolyzing urea then burning it to water (and nitrogen) is a net gain in energy.

sitkack 14y ago

If I could downvote you I would, but since I can't I will leave a meta-comment. Why is it important for you call out that they are in the set of three different minorities ? The entire tone of your post isn't constructive.

eps 14y ago
Not all posts need to be constructive to contribute to the discussion.
DanBlake 14y ago
I dont feel I am calling anyone out (except perhaps the website/author). I was trying to convey that this article is only getting traction /because/ of that. It is a deceptive invention that uses more power than it creates. This is contrary to the article which would have you believe if you piss in a can you could have 6 hours of generator power. Quite literally this device is nothing more than a fraud as it is currently written. Article title is : "These four African girls have created a pee-powered generator" 1: It is not a generator 2: You are mistaken. Its the article author who calls out front and center they are in 3 different minorities (see the title above) - I am simply responding to that.

HarryHirsch 14y ago

Amen to that. Sewage gas, on the contrary is used with great success to generate energy, both in the developing world and in the developed world. This urea-electrolysis thing, on the other hand, is plain weird, to generate hydrogen you must put energy in that you won't ever recover, thermodynamics tells you that, and hydrogen isn't something that's easily stored or transported.

DanBlake 14y ago

Basically, the article is made up. You would be hard pressed to run a generator for 6 hours on a gallon of gasoline. We are talking about urine here- 95% water.

mikiem 14y ago
The article does not say how much power the generator will produce over 6Hrs time.
- DanBlake 14y ago
  You could not even idle for 6 hours with that generator in the pic. (On gasoline)

Geee 14y ago

The invention is about cheaper hydrogen production + wastewater treatment. The original paper http://www.suttonfruit.com/pics/urea_electrolysis.pdf http://www.suttonfruit.com/pics/urea_electrolysis.pdf They use nickel catalyst in the process and achieve 36% cheaper hydrogen production than water electrolysis. I don't know if the results explicitly means that it could be used as a sustainable power source. The original article doesn't mention that. The main point is cheaper way of producing hydrogen fuel while denitrificating waste water.