Radical Technological Shifts

Trying to avoid the really bad jokes that could accompany urine into fuel threads....

The big obstacle to this right now is the amount of urea available and the requirement to use catalysts. Catalysts are generally expensive, scarce, often produced in areas not politically stable, and really nasty for the environment. We'd almost have to switch over to a urine-specific sewer system to collect all the urine in a reasonmable cost-effective manner, I think.

Kervan's results have not been duplicated by others??

Firstly I would like to point out that I am neither a chemist or physicist, just an interested engineer who had taken all of the requisite chemistry, physics, etc while in university 25 - 30 years ago.

Urea is plentiful. No short supply there. As for catalysts, I understand that they are achieving success with Ni as well as other materials other than Pd. I do not think that a urine specific waste system would be necessary. Likely it could be extracted directly from waste treatment plants, or otherwise collected.

As for Kervan's results not being duplicated, my current online research indicates otherwise. It appears that initially his results were ridiculed and not taken seriously since the notion of biological transmutation flew in the face of current theory, termed "the invariance of matter" by a French scientist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

If you are interested, here are some additional links which contain many cited references. I do not have the resources to obtain or verify these references, but it does make for some interesting reading.

Breaking the barriers between biology, chemistry and physics.

Adept Alchemy (Robert A. Nelson): Biological Transmutations

First I should point out that I almost never "think outside the box". I am a very hard-headed ex-engineer (I'm coming up on older than dirt) who believes emphatically in experimental evidence. If at all possible, I never accept theory until I can see replicable experimental evidence. I am a great believer in critical thinking and quite skpetical of any and all revolutionary new claims, whether cold fusion or mortgage derivatives.

I find no reliable evidence of anyone duplicating Kervan's claims. I find lots of citations that use the "circular citation" game, similar to those who support the HHO hoaxes. Nobody has suggested any mechanism by which this might happen. Nobody can account for the energy required for transmutations (we do understand cellular energetics pretty well).

As for the urea, I don't see any readily available source. There's a fair amount in the sewage stream, but how to separate it? As I said, we could go for a urine specific system (shades of Kaiser Bill making saltpeter!), but we're having difficulty maintaining the existing infrastructure without adding a new one. And, yes, I understand Ni to be a suitable catalyst. But it's still somewhat nasty and expensive. And, where shall we get it? I see urea generated hydrogen as an interesting sideshow, but not capable of being the main event.