Urine: The Hydrogen Fuel of the Future?

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People have known for a long time that you can generate hydrogen easily by running a current through water to split it into its component parts — oxygen and hydrogen — using a process called electrolysis. The problem is that the amount of energy needed to split the water is relatively large and the materials required are very expensive (although last year some MIT scientists created a brand new cheap catalyst that they say changes all that).

Urine to the rescue. Now some researchers at Ohio University have found that urine makes a much better starting point for generating hydrogen than water. The hydrogen found in urine is bonded much more loosely than in water. So loose, in fact, that by using simple and cheap materials hydrogen can be generated from urine using 1/3 of the voltage needed to make hydrogen from water.

The researchers see a much wider application for this technology in wastewater treatment plants by generating hydrogen while treating the waste simultaneously.