http://www.physorg.com/news165836803.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- You do two things at motorway services: fill up one tank and
empty another. US chemists have combined refuelling your car and relieving
yourself by creating a new catalyst that can extract hydrogen from urine.

Chemistry World reports that the catalyst could not only fuel the
hydrogen-powered cars of the future, but could also help clean up municipal
wastewater.

Gerardine Botte of Ohio University uses an electrolytic approach to produce
hydrogen from urine - the most abundant waste on Earth - at a fraction of the
cost of producing hydrogen from water.

Urine's major constituent is urea, which incorporates four hydrogen atoms per
molecule - importantly, less tightly bonded than the hydrogen atoms in water
molecules.

Botte uses electrolysis to break the molecule apart, developing an inexpensive
new nickel-based electrode to selectively and efficiently oxidise the urea. To
break the molecule down, a voltage of 0.37V needs to be applied across the cell
- much less than the 1.23V needed to split water.

Her work is described in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical
Communications.

"During the electrochemical process the urea gets adsorbed on to the nickel
electrode surface, which passes the electrons needed to break up the molecule,"
Botte told Chemistry World.

Botte believes the technology could be easily scaled-up to generate hydrogen
while cleaning up the effluent from sewage plants. "We do not need to reinvent
the wheel as there are already electrolysers being used in different
applications."

More information: B K Boggs, R L King and G G Botte, Chem. Commun., 2009, DOI:
10.1039/b905974a

Provided by Royal Society of Chemistry


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]