Ah, remember hydrogen? The super-fuel of the future that was going to save us all from the choking, radioactive, smog-filled mess of a planet that our energy needs are leading us into? You’d be forgiven for forgetting. It seems that most people have let the hydrogen question drop off the radar recently, despite the element being the most ideal fuel imaginable.
About 75% of the entire universe is made of the stuff. Every star in the sky is made of it. It was the first thing ever created in the big bang. It’s also most simple chemical element there is. Burn hydrogen and you get pure, clean water vapour as a your exhaust fume. The irony is, it’s bloody difficult trying to get hold of the stuff.
Splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen is about as efficient as we can get. But you need to put quite a lot of energy in to get anything out. What we need is a way of getting this wonder gas that’s – well, that’s piss-easy.
Which brings me to research by Ohio University that’s just been published. The rather rudely named Geraldine Botte has discovered that the best source of easy-to-extract hydrogen is in all of us. Especially once we’ve had a drink or two. Do I need to spell it out? It’s the wee wee, stupid.
Yep, our tinkle is a rich, yellow vein of the universe’s most abundant super-fuel. Our bladder and kidneys are incredible refineries for nature’s explosive wonder gas, as anyone who’s been to the loo after a brown ale drinker can tell you.
Apparently it takes nearly a quarter of the effort to take hydrogen out of our slash than it does to take it from water. Catalysing a giant tank of widdle to provide us with clean, cheap energy might not be everyone’s idea of a brighter, technologically superior tomorrow, of course. But for men at least, the future is in their hands. If they do it standing up, that is.
Ed Chipperfield
