Urine powered generator
 

This is a bit unusual, but pretty cool none the less. I can't really think of a better use for my urine off hand...

Four African Teenage Girls Create a Pee-Powered Generator | Living on GOOD

http://pre.cloudfront.goodinc.com/po...10148maker.jpg

http://www.suttonfruit.com/pics/urea_electrolysis.pdf is the document on splitting urine.

They are showing the cost of hydrogen made this way as costing a little more then half of that made from splitting water in a fuel cell, the tough part of course is that the energy required to produce the hydrogen is still there, I'll have to look for my figures from a while back but I remember if you produced hydrogen from $.12 kwh electricity that energy wise it would be like paying $37 per gallon for gasoline, lets say this cuts it in half in an ideal world, that is still expensive energy, splitting urine is not free.

Haha, I knew there had to be some hitch to it. I was figuring that it was cost since they don't talk about it in any of the articles I could find!

So it still falls short of being able to power it's self, of course the fuel cell that runs off urine should be cheaper to build then one that works well that splits water, but it still requires a huge energy input for a small energy output and the system does not produce enough energy to run it's self.

I don't think this is an energy generator so much as an energy storage device. A small town can have a wind turbine/solar panel setup, and something like this would allow for a bit of electricity at night, at higher efficiency than doing the same thing with water. It's less efficient than a battery, but it's also cheaper and would probably last longer.