scientists at ohio university have developed a way that can harness the power of piss to fuel society-at-large. this “yellow energy” can be used livestock farms from the animal waste that they are required to store by law. essentially, this is just a different way of using hydrogen power.
current hydrogen fuel cells extract hydrogen from water, which requires quite a bit of electricity to do. piss-powered fuel cells, however, require only about 3% of the energy needed to extract the hydrogen bonded to the nitrogen in piss. (not so) sweet!
what does this mean for the average person? not much yet, but by a rough estimate this technology could be commercially available to certain industries (such as agriculture) within six months and a refrigerator-sized unit could cost about $5,000 us dollars.
when can we expect to piss in our own gas tanks? who knows. but it is estimated that piss power can get us about 90 mpg. makes me wonder how the exhaust is going to smell. if you’ve ever driven behind a car that runs off of vegetable oil, you’ll notice a whiff of french fries in the air, so with piss power, will it just smell like burnt piss? if it does, at least it’ll help with tailgating.
pictured below is how i imagine it would be to fill up your tank:
fill’er up!
for the original article on discovery.com, click here.
