Pee-powered vehicles may be the next sustainable energy

More sustainable than batteries

Electric cars are the future but maybe pee-powered vehicles would be more sustainable than batteries.

As explained here, ammonia, which is a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen (NH3) is present in pee. It burns quickly and has a high energy density per unit of volume, including significant environmental benefits. Since NH3 contains no carbon (C), burning it won’t cause it to emit any greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

Since ammonia has a higher energy density compared to electric batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, this is crucial for heavy-duty ground and air transportation, which is severely confined by weight and volume.

Additionally, ammonia-powered vehicles are lighter and do not have the disposal issue that lithium-ion batteries do.

The fact that ammonia has been employed industrially for more than a century is another benefit because the infrastructure for storage, handling, and delivery is already in place around the world, therefore, ammonia is the best fuel for long-distance trucking, locomotives, aircraft, and shipping.

In 2009, Dr. Gerardine Botte’s research showed how to electrolyze human urine to make hydrogen at a much lower cost than the electrolysis of water. The urea is adsorbed onto the nickel electrode surface during the electrochemical reaction, which then passes the electrons required to break up the molecule. While nitrogen with a minuscule amount of oxygen and hydrogen was gathered at the anode, pure hydrogen evolves at the cathode. The process produces carbon dioxide, but it is not present in the gases that are collected because it combines with the potassium hydroxide in the solution to form potassium carbonate. The methods for extracting pee from the water now available are expensive and inefficient. Before releasing gas-phase ammonia emissions, urea hydrolyzes into ammonia spontaneously. These emissions cause the air to become contaminated with ammonium sulfate and nitrate particles, which can lead to several health issues including chronic bronchitis, asthma attacks, and early mortality.

With such system robots may be able to refuel themselves thanks to the Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC), which was invented in 2017 by UK researchers at the University of West England. The MFC is an electrical circuit powered by microbes like bacteria that consume urine. Since then, the cells have been developed to power home appliances.

Researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground are also exploring the possibility of using urine to feed large-scale fuel cells that could, in theory, power entire bases as well as remote electronics in vehicles.

Here you can find an experiment to make microbial fuel cells with urine.

Even while scientists support the use of ammonia in energy production, it has not yet been fully implemented. Ammonia’s potential as an energy carrier has not been fully explored due to a lack of equipment that can effectively extract it in a confined space. But as technology has advanced, its feasibility in terms of larger-scale capacities has increased.

A golf cart jointly created by Oxford University and the Hong Kong’s University of Technology was displayed last year as the first ammonia-powered fuel cell electric vehicle in the world. Ammonia is kept in a cylinder in liquid form and used to power the golf cart. It then passes through a “cracker” where catalysts created by the University of Oxford in the UK break it down into nitrogen and hydrogen. 99.9% of the ammonia can be converted, and the remaining 1% is removed by a gas purifier. To power the car, electricity is generated from the hydrogen that was acquired. Together with the water vapor that is produced during the chemical reaction, nitrogen is released into the environment together with other, harmless gases.

A two-stroke, fuel-flexible ammonia engine is being developed in Denmark by MAN Energy Solutions, with plans to deliver the first one in 2024.

The 2020 US-based business Amogy is another participant. The business invented energy-dense, emission-free ammonia power systems. It created a small, very effective reactor that can break ammonia and use hydrogen to power a fuel cell.

Ammonia also fuelled a mid-sized John Deere tractor that was powered by an Amogy reactor. The company created a hybrid fuel cell system that can generate power for several hours using a normal liquid storage tank and extremely effective ammonia-cracking modules.

Amogy disclosed that it has raised an additional $46 million in the capital, bringing its total funding to $68 million. It intends to use its technology on an ocean cargo ship and an 18-wheel tractor-trailer. This is significant because it brings ammonium out of the lab and into practical, industrial application cases.

Given that urine is the most abundant waste on the planet, there won’t be a shortage anytime soon. That’s why it should be the most employed solution to get energy sustainably.