SCIENCE

From toilet to Toyota

Tuesday,  June 3, 2008 3:07 AM

By Kevin Mayhood

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

An Ohio University researcher says she has tapped into an efficient method of making clean energy for our cars and homes.  The source, said Gerardine Botte, director of Ohio University's Electrochemical Engineering Research Laboratory, is flush with possibilities.

 

The system her team is working on is powered by ammonia, which is formed when urea breaks down in human and animal urine.  "The idea is to get some kind of energy value from waste," Botte said.

 

Environ International Corp. estimated in 2005 that about 5 million tons of ammonia goes untapped in the waste stream each year in the United States. That's enough to provide electricity to 900,000 homes, the lab estimates.  And the process, Botte said, produces no greenhouse gases.

 

How much interest is there in the work? The technology, which Ohio University has patented, has drawn a new company to southeastern Ohio and garnered a $1 million state grant.

 

FULL ARTICLE: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/science/stories/2008/06/03/sci_hydrogen.ART_ART_06-03-08_B4_HKABR53.html?sid=101

That is awesome.

Extracting hydrogen from human/animal waste and decomposition of waste vegetable material is a goal worthy of research and development. Already there are working facilities that capture methane from sewage treatment plants and landfills, and farm-scaled methane digesters probably will become more common as the technology becomes more accessible and fuel prices continue to rise.

 

Maybe I'm missing something in this article, but it escapes me how this part about agricultural ammonia helps build a case:

 

SCIENCE

From toilet to Toyota

Tuesday,  June 3, 2008 3:07 AM

By Kevin Mayhood

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

[...]

 

Holbrook said the system has other advantages, including that ammonia is easier and cheaper to store and transport than liquid hydrogen.

 

Ammonia has been used to make fertilizer for decades, and the nation has 3,000 miles of pipeline for ammonia. Barges, rail cars and trucks built for storage and delivery of ammonia are in use.

 

Almost every state has retail ammonia outlets. Iowa alone has 800, according to the fuel-cell network.

 

[...]

 

 

Anhydrous ammonia fertilizer provides nitrogen to boost drought resistance and crop yeilds, primarily in corn. It's composed of one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen.

 

The hydrogen used in making anhydrous ammonia is extracted from natural gas or petroleum components, primarily methane, propane, butane and naphtha, via a complex process involving heat, pressure, steam and catalysts. In addition to hydrogen, the process yields byproducts containing sulfur compounds.

 

Nitrogen is obtained by compressing air until it becomes liquid, and then using fractional distillation. The nitrogen is combined with hydrogen to form anhydrous ammonia that is shipped via diesel fuel-powered barges, railcars, trucks and pumped through 3,000 miles of pipeline with electric motors.

 

How is natural gas- and petroleum-derived anhydrous ammonia relevant to the topic of the article? It would be more efficient to use the natural gas or petroleum as fuel, without all the energy-intensive processing.

 

Maybe the writer turned it up in his research and threw it in there, but if the researchers/promoters included it in their pitch, it smells of obfuscation and puts this "breakthrough" in the same file drawer with cold fusion and using the energy from radio waves to extract hydrogen from seawater.

Rob you have to remember that OU, specifically, is desperate for traditional scientific accomplishments it can point to.  This is something a PR campaign can be orchestrated around and the president can point out to the board of trustees, alumni and their wallets, and every single visitor to OU as evidence that hard science is happening at OU. 

 

When I worked for the newspaper there, all the reporters and photographers would sit in eager anticipation at press conferences, just waiting for the moment when the president brought up "Diagnostic Hybrids", an impressive-sounding but nevertheless small company someone had started in Athens.  Check out the website:

 

http://www.dhiusa.com

 

It looks huge on this website but I think they only had 8 or 9 employees!

 

I think they were also pointing out that the infrastructure for Ammonia transport is already there. So when the technology catches up, it wouldn't be difficult to make mainstream.

Another shining example of how colleges can do completely impractical things just to get grant money and publicity.

 

Ammonia comes from shifted natural gas in a capital and energy intensive process.  Anhydrous ammonia is also pretty hazardous stuff...especially to be driving around with a pressurized tank full. 

 

If the benefit is that we have 3,000 miles of ammonia pipelines, then why not just skip the costly step where we turn natural gas into ammonia, and fill our cars with natrual gas.  After all, we've got hundreds of thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines in this country...most of them lead right into people's homes!

Did you read the article???

 

The researcher at OU developed a cheaper and less energy intensive process of getting Hydrogen (for fuelcells) from Ammonia. The ammonia would come from human/animal wastes. No where in the entire original article is natural gas mentioned.

I'm just not buying that people or animals have enough energy in their pee (the source of her urea) to run an electrolyzer and a car.  I also wonder what the capital costs would be just to convert your transportation energy to run off of said pee.

 

Lets pretend this gets commercialized.  You've now got to buy a fuel cell car that only runs on ammonia ($$$$), an in-home electrolyzer (up front $$ and electricity to run it $$), separate your urine from the rest of your plumbing ($$$).  You'd also have to drive around town in a car that could kill everyone within a two block radius if the anhydrous ammonia tank ruptures.  I hate to be a naysayer because I love technological innovation, but this feels like one of those things that we'll look back on in 40 years with the same nostalgia that we do with the flying cars of the 1960's.

 

 

Anaerobic digesters working off of poop and creating methane is a much more practical process.

I don't know why people on here are so pessimistic about recent developments in alternative energy. When I was in CE I remember my professor talking about how him and his colleagues at Wright-Patterson designed a machine that could capture a bouncing ball. It was a small project and they didn't think it was such a big deal but now the Department of Defense uses the same technology to capture ballistic missiles in case N. Korea or Russia tries to pull a fast one. What amounts to a little innovation can lead to so many other great things.

Again... did you read the article? The plan would be to collect, commercially, the human/animal urine waste and process it into the ammonia. Then, you could use the existing ammonia pipelines and systems to transport it to the consumer channel. All you would need in your car is the fuel cell, a battery to start the electrolysis process, an alternator to recharge said "starter" battery, and a tank to hold the ammonia.

^---- "I don't know why people on here are so pessimistic about recent developments in alternative energy."

 

  It's one thing to do a lab experiment, and another to produce something commercially. Plain and simply, the gasoline or diesel powered internal combustion engine is hard to beat in terms of convenience, flexibility, ease of use, and return on investment as a source of industrial power.

 

 

It sounds like an impressive breakthrough to me.  Its a pretty confusing article but basically if I'm reading it correctly and if it was written correctly, the lab has a breakthrough on turning amonia into hydrogen regardless where that amonia has come from.  She's just taking the additional step in working out that she can create amonia from urea.

 

Things that change the world are when there's a breakthrough no one thought of that makes things significantly cheaper.    $600k seems like a hell of a deal to license it.

"Honey, did you forget to empty the chamber pot into the Hydrogen Fuel Cell generator last night?"