Is there a new demand for this old product? (Photo from ecogeek.org)
No comment necessary here -- this is all a little hard to imagine. I'm always interested in any thinking out of the box, especially if it helps to stretch our planet's resources, but I usually take a nice-work-if-you-can-get-it attitude about such things.
This article by Hank Green of ecogeek.org is interesting, though it's a little technical. Some of the readers' comments are just too good.
Hydrogen seems like a logical choice for fuel - it's energy dense and emits only water upon combustion - but upon closer examination we see that it's extremely expensive to make from water, so all the hydrogen in production today is made from fossil fuels. But Gerardine Botte at Ohio University has figured out an easy and efficient way to break the bonds in urea to produce hydrogen. The process consumes roughly one quarter of the energy needed to electrolyze water. And, yes, the world has a fairly plentiful (and renewable) supply of urea. Maybe not enough to power all our cars, but it's a start.
Interested in knowing how this is done, and you don't mind more technical stuff? Then there's more:
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