The process was already known. The impressive thing is that the young ladies in a third world country put it to work. I don't care if it took ten times the energy generated. If they need electricity to hydorlize the the pee then stick a solar panel on the outhouse.
It's a cool use of available materials.
Solar energy for electrolysis is totally feasible in sunny areas of the world.
Sure, but then hydrogen becomes just an energy carrier and a poor one to boot. Highly volatile, explosive when mixed with air, needs further compression or liquification, specialized storage tanks etc. When you then use it in combustion engines your solar energy becomes about 4% efficient at best. Although batteries have their drawbacks they are still way more efficient when you want to store electricity from solar.
Criminy, I don't think there's anyone anywhere who believes that this is the answer to the world's future energy needs. What the hell's with all the negativity and nay-saying. The girls are learning and thinking and doing...that's what's important about this story so far as I'm concerned. I'm impressed by these young students a good deal more than I am with the potential of this particular project they put together. OK, it's not particularly feasible. Got it. But who knows what these girls will go on to develop next? YOU GO GIRLS!
And light from a light bulb was impossible until somebody failed the first few hundred times. Always working on the same old things that make "sense" doesn't always make sense. Not arguing for or against, simply stating that we shouldn't tell somebody they "can't".
Grisu - I completely understand the angle that you are coming from and I see your points. But also understand that many big breakthroughs come from a garage somewhere. What if......
What if...because they are young....the test was contaminated with frog dung from a frog only found there....and it was a catalyst to breaking hydrogen free like nothing we have found yet? Yeah, I know its ridiculous, but what if....
OK which one of you guys "leaked "this story?Pee-Power for the Uri-Nation? No need to add salt.
It's a cool use of available materials. Solar energy for electrolysis is totally feasible in sunny areas of the world.
ne.
Even risking some serious flaming but here is a quote of Ronald Reagen that is just utterly BS:“There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.”
Unfortunately, physical chemistry will simply tell you that is not possible. Do you know the difference between an exothermic and an endothermic reaction? To stay with water: Burning hydrogen and oxygen to get water is exothermic meaning you will get energy out of the reaction. On the other hand, electrolysis of water to get hydrogen and oxygen is endothermic. You will need to put energy in to get the two. In a perfect scenario the energy you will need to put in is the same as the energy you will get out. If you simply look at the enthalpy the energy you will get out is 285.83 kJ per mol of water. That same amount you need to put in to get hydrogen and oxygen. (It is actually a bit more complicated for water due to the liquid to gas transformation; see here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/electrol.html )
What does a catalyst do? A catalyst reduces the amount of energy needed to get a reaction started. You can actually mix hydrogen and oxygen and nothing will happen until you put a spark in. That spark is the activation energy needed to get the reaction going. It is tiny for that strong exothermic reaction but still needed. A catalyst would be a substance that you add to the mixture and water would spontaneously form at room temperature without supplying any additional heat. The catalyst would not be consumed during that process. Almost all catalysts work on exothermic reactions; they just reduce the barrier to get the reaction going. Thus, I can tell you there will not be any catalyst that will magically dissociate hydrogen and oxygen from water. Now, what you can work on is making electrolysis more efficient as it is currently at only about 85% efficiency. I saw recently a paper where they got to almost 100% with a special electrode. If that is true we will have maxed out the system. Looking for further improvements will be rather pointless.
I am also a bit skeptical about the garage thing. That may have been true more than 50 years ago when there weren't that many laboratories around but nowadays big breakthroughs come from dedicated research labs and companies. Technology has advanced so much that the possibility of one individual singlehandedly rewrite physics/chemistry etc. is rather remote IMO.
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