Urine: An Ever-Flowing Stream of Fuel Cell Material?

To most people, urine is a waste fluid that’s promptly flushed away as soon as it’s expelled (unless you abide by the “yellow let it mellow” rule). But to scientists, your pee could be the golden font that advances carbon fuel-cell technology.

Korean scientists have demonstrated that carbon, a precious fuel cell material, can be extracted from dried urine and that it is a powerful conductor of electricity.

The findings, published Monday in Nature, offer an economical way to advance fuel cell technology, and could also improve the environment if deployed on a large scale.

Urine Power

Fuel cells — devices which harvest energy from a chemical reaction — often use platinum as a catalyst, making them expensive to produce. Researchers have been exploring ways to replace the metal with carbon. However carbon nanostructures, created synthetically, can also be quite expensive.

Now researchers from South Korea have proven that equally effective carbon compounds can be extracted from urine — making them a cheap stand-in for platinum or synthetic carbon.

To test the potential of pee, scientists collected urine samples from healthy individuals. Then, they heated individuals’ samples to evaporate the water, leaving behind a dried, yellowish deposit. Next, they super-heated various test samples of dried urine in a range between 700 and 1,000 degrees Celsius for six hours to carbonize the urine.

The heating process caused salts and other elements to gasify and leave behind carbon. Urine is loaded with other elements besides carbon, which makes the leftover carbon highly porous — ideal for fuel cell catalysts. As an added bonus, the gasified salts solidified and clung to the furnace wall after cooling; researchers say it’s possible to harvest these remnants for commercial use as de-icing salts.

Most importantly, the urine carbon was an excellent conductor of electricity, especially the batch that was heated to 1,000 degrees. Researchers said this is the first time carbon was extracted from urine using this simple method.

An Abundant Resource

Roughly 300 to 400 milligrams of urine carbon can be extracted from a single liter of urine, which means a single person can generate up to 0.2 ounces of the fuel catalyst a day. Multiply that by everyone using the restroom at this very moment, and you have yourself an abundant resource.

Researchers said urine could easily be collected at public restrooms and dried outdoors by the sun to create the yellowish powder that starts the process. Where these open fields of urine will reside is another question. But researchers say their findings could help put our waste, which pollutes waterways with phosphates and pharmaceuticals, to good use.

It’s certainly a lot to contemplate for your next trip to the lavatory

Original : discovermagazine.com

Google Enlists Major Shippers to Expand Delivery Service

ALISTAIR BARR

GoogleGOOGL -1.74% built a fleet of small blue and white vans to run its local commerce and delivery service Google Shopping Express in parts of San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. But as it expands into less densely populated areas, Google is leaning on other shippers.

Google

Google Shopping Express said Tuesday it will expand its overnight-delivery service in coming months across northern California so that it will stretch from the Oregon border to Fresno, roughly 400 miles to the south.

Google said it is working with “major shipping carriers” to fulfill the orders, which can be placed by 7 pm for delivery the following day.

Google Shopping Express routes online and mobile orders to stores run by retailers including Target, Toys “R” Us, WalgreenWAG -0.62% and Whole Foods MarketWFM -0.13%. Store staff pick and pack the orders and Google handles the delivery to people’s homes.

In urban and suburban areas, where residents live closer together, it is efficient for Google to run its own delivery trucks because they can deliver multiple orders in the same trip. But in more rural areas, the economics get tougher, according to Tom Fallows, product management director for Google Shopping Express.

“In less dense areas, a partnership with other carriers makes more sense,” he said. Fallows declined to name the shipping companies and whether those costs will get passed on to shoppers, though he said Google is working with national and regional carriers. “We are very committed to making this an everyday affordable price point,” he said.

Google will keep using its own delivery vans as it brings the service to more cities, Fallows added.

Traditional e-commerce providers rely on shippers to deliver purchases to shoppers. “But with local stores there is no infrastructure yet,” Fallows said. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

Google hasn’t disclosed sales or order volumes for Google Shopping Express, and Fallows declined to comment on how the business is faring. But he said Google is committed to its delivery service. “Once you are dealing with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of orders per day, it makes sense to run it through your own system and network of delivery vehicles,” he said.

Google is competing with Amazon.comAMZN -0.53%, the world’s largest Internet retailer, which has grabbed some of Google’s lucrative product-search business in recent years. Google Shopping Express is a way for Google to try to take some of that business back.

Google started its service in urban areas with fast delivery from local stores, and now it is expanding more broadly. In contrast, Amazon started with a broad online-shopping service and is now focusing more on deliveries in urban areas.

Both companies appear to be coming to similar conclusions: When delivering orders in densely populated areas, it makes sense to have your own fleet. When deliveries are headed to less populated areas, it is better to rely on existing carriers.

- Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly attributed Fallows’ remarks to Brandon Trew, another Google executive.

Original : wsj.com