Monday, August 23, 2010

Promising Alternative Power - PEE!

IO9 is so good at finding such promising articles! Case in point?

A new company, named appropriately enough - Youtricity, is making the case for fuel cells as an answer to power hungry (urp....) areas. However the standard fuel cell often uses platinum in its' membrane and so is expensive, plus they often use fuels that are explosive and dangerous to handle, like hydrogen or methanol gas.

Now the company Carbamide Power System has developed a system that uses far less expensive materials in manufacture and a much safer fuel. Urine - that's right good ole h2 flow. Well to be honest the system in fact uses urea, which is a component of human and animal urine. Now urea is mass produced already as an industrial fertilizer, so initially the system could run on that, but the manufacture states that urine can be used just as easily and the output is electricity and clean drinking water...(urp...my drinking water? uhhhhh no...that's a little too first hand for me...I want a couple more steps in the process)

But knowing that in some areas the major pollutant is urine, if there was an economic incentive to collect and recycle the fluid sounds like a good idea. But I am just thinking out loud so to speak.

Here is the IO9 article

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