Garardine Botte, scientist at Ohio University, has developed a catalyst capable of extracting hydrogen from urine, and she says the discovery could soon be used to power automobiles. “I believe we could have pee-powered cars capable of 60 miles per gallon on the road within a year.”

The device uses significantly less energy than is needed to extract hydrogen from water and says it could power hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the near future. Her electrolyzer uses a nickel-based electrode to extract hydrogen from urea (NH2)2CO, the main component in urine. Hydrogen is less tightly bound to the nitrogen in urea than to the oxygen in water, so the electrolyzer needs just 0.37 volts across the cell to oxidize the urea, according to Botte. That’s less than half the amount of energy in an AA battery and considerably less than the 1.23 volts needed to split water.

One of hydrogen’s biggest stumbling blocks to use as an alternative fuel is the amount of energy needed to produce it. And then there’s the matter of distributing it. Botte says her gadget eliminates such problems because it’s small enough to integrate into an automobile. Urine is also readily available — your body produces two to three liters of it each day, and it is the most abundant form of waste on the planet. We could treat waste water while fueling our cars.

Botte’s current electrolyzer prototype is about the size of a pair of CD jewel cases and can produce up to 500 milliwatts of power. That’s pretty small, but Ohio University has patented the technology and Botte says it could be scaled up to power hybrid and electric vehicles or anything else running on electricity.

This could negate several major road-trip deterrents in one fell swoop.

Via wired.com.

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

19 replies on “Have Urine Will Travel”

  2. That is amazing… The woman sitting next to me on my flight and I were just talking about what the next innovation in transportation was going to be. No way that I would have guessed pee-powered cars.

    I wonder if her research started with the question of “what common chemical compounds have the easiest to extract Hydrogen atoms?” and urea was on the list, or if she literally was like, hey, what do we have alot of? Pee! Let’s test how easy it is to extract the hydrogen.

  5. I know there are lots of jokes to be made, but I imagine the real excitement about this isn’t coming from the utilization of human urine, but cow and pig urine, which is threatening to drown the planet. Seriously: large dairy operations are hazardous waste dumps, with “urine lakes” requiring insanely expensive mitigation efforts. This could maybe solve that problem?

  6. Actually, this might work out pretty neat. Since hydrogen is so tightly bonded to oxygen in H20, but not to urea, basically you’d just need to install a good sized water tank in the car, the driver drinks from it while driving, pees into a receptacle where the urine is broken down into urea, the hydrogen is split off using a fuel-cell, and routed to the motor. Assuming this is a hydrogen/oxygen fuel-cell powered vehicle (instead of one using a hydrogen-powered combustion engine), water would be created as a by-product, which could then be recycled back to the water tank, creating in essence an almost completely closed-loop system – water in, water out!

    Self-powered, healthy, AND eliminates the need for rest stops all in one fell swoop!

  8. On the minus side, this reaction generates nearly as much CO2 per BTU as natural gas, but requires the additional input of electrical energy.

  9. Car seats radically modified; laws changed to allow driving with wangs out; turnpike exits become ghost towns (well, except the ones that have good pie).

    Zoos with elephants become energy-independent.

    Greatest societal changes since fire.

    Oh, and Brissey wins best post of the day, no matter what comes after. Up your game, Dan!

  13. The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was the crazy astronaut stalker lady, Lisa Nowak, and her 900 mile Depends-aided drive. This technology was MADE for her!

  14. Does the urine have to be separated from the rest of the waste stream for this to work? If so, this is going to be a tad more complicated than it looks at first blush. If not, this is the most awesome idea I’ve heard all year.

  16. I think they only work if you’ve had six beers first, as they use the alcohol content to power the vehicle.

    or. they should …

  18. This sounds really good to me. Of course, that may be because I’ve driven about 1200 miles in the last week with another 500 to go with a wife and kids.

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