Producing refrigeration from my pee
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Publicado 2024-01-08
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In this video I'll be showing how to produce mild refrigeration with compounds extracted from urine. Human urine contains 1-2% urea (CO[NH2]2), which I'll be convert into Ammonia (NH3). This can be done either by thermal decomposition of solid urea after it's been distilled out of urine, or by reacting urine with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and heating it. I opted for the second method, since it's less energy intensive. Videos showing the extraction of ammonia from urine often concentrate the urine by a factor of 10-20 before adding sodium hydroxide, but I found this method to be too time consuming and liable to overflow from excessive foam. Instead, I found it worked best to simply react un-concentrated urine with sodium hydroxide and heat it. Also, the smells produced from this approach are relatively mild. The only downside is that numerous batches of urine need to be processed.
Once Ammonia is obtained, there's several ways it can be used for refrigeration. Anhydrous ammonia can be used as the refrigerant in a vapor-compression system and has a temperature/pressure and phase behavior almost identical to propane. Aqueous ammonia can be used in a heat driven vapor-absorption system, and Ammonium Nitrate (NH4NO3) can be used as a "cold pack" by endothermic dissolution in water. In this video I'll be using the third method, because I wanted to investigate a heat-driven refrigeration system, and endothermic dissolving seemed like a simpler approach than vapor-absorption.
The Ammonium Nitrate is produced by reacting it with Nitric Acid (HNO3). I produced the nitric acid by the "Birkeland-Eyde" process, which uses a high voltage arc to ionize oxygen and nitrogen in the air, after which a certain percentage of those atoms recombine to form Nitric Oxide (NO) gas. The nitric acid quickly combines with more oxygen to form Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), which is bubbled through distilled water. When Nitrogen Dioxide interacts with water, it forms Nitric Acid. This is a very slow and energy intensive process, but has the advantage that it allows the production of nitrates quite literally out of thin air.
I should note that in small quantities, Ammonium Nitrate is actually pretty safe to store and handle, and even if it's heated directly with a blow torch, it just melts and then decomposes into Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and water vapor.
To produce refrigeration, the ammonium nitrate is dissolved in water in a thin-walled aluminum can and placed into contact with a large water reservoir inside a foam container. The water reservoir acts as a thermal reservoir. Once the solution has absorbed as much heat as it can from the water reservoir, it's removed and then recharged by boiling off the water, cooling in a water bath, and then adding new water into the dry salt. In theory this works pretty well, but in reality i found that the boiler didn't work fast enough to keep the fridge temperature dropping, so really there need to be multiple cans on a rotation for this to work well.
By creating a saturated solution of aqueous ammonium nitrate, I was able to produce a temperature drop to near freezing (about 3.8C) in an aluminum bottle, but only reached a minimum temperature of 13.5C in the fridge. Pretty poor performance, but at least I was able to cool off a soda a little bit.
I also tested a few other substances to act as "instant cold" packs by mixing saturated solutions, and these are the temperature drops I recorded:
Sodium Chloride: -1.6 C
Potassium Nitrate: -11.1 C
Potassium Chloride: -13.1 C
Sodium Nitrate: -16.4 C
Ammonium Chloride: -17.0 C
Urea: -19.6 C
Ammonium Nitrate: -20.4C
Music Used:
Kevin MacLeod - Lobby Time
Kevin MacLeod - Hard Boiled
Kevin MacLeod - George Street Shuffle
Kevin MacLeod - Groove Groove
Todos los comentarios (21)
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Just so you know, I'm usually pretty hydrated, but that pee sat around for months before I processed it so it changed color.
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"mom can we get refrigeration cycle?" mom: "we have refrigeration at home" *refrigeration at home*
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Pee based refrigeration is the post apocalyptic instructions I'm looking for
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Always nice to see some new pee chemistry.
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It is a certainty that every chemistry YouTuber eventually decides that they can extract useful chemicals from their pee. What truly sets each apart is when they decide that the value proposition of continuing to collect and process human urine is not worth it. Your limit is 7.5 liters. Impressive
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The primary ingredient in DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) is urea so turning pee into cash might be a viable business model. Also, spraying DEF on your lawn or garden is an easy way of adding nitrogen
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Welcome to the realm of pee chemistry, it's nice to see you here
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One of the problems with a DIY Birkland-Eyed process is that nitric acid acts like a dissolved gas just like HCl does, not like a liquid like sulfuric acid. Bubbling a large excess of air through the dilute nitric acid you're making quickly approaches diminishing returns. In my experience, you want to reduce the airflow to the a minimum to make the process more efficient. The same would apply to ammonia, but you're getting a lot more concentrated ammonia with urea/sodium hydroxide and no air. This is probably stuff you know already but eh... I'm leaving it anyway.
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Yet another Science youtuber I watch has earned the title of "Piss Chemist" If I had a nickel for every time that happened, I'd have 4 nickels, which isnt a lot, but it's weird that it happened 4 times.
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Air stones for aquariums don't dissolve air directly into water very well. The bubbles are mainly for surface agitation which allows for much more gas transfer. Look at what the CO2 aquarium people do to efficiently diffuse CO2. Inline atomizers might work better for you
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I'm currently in the process of finishing my own Birkeland-Eyde Reactor by fixing the last few leaks in the absorber. Always interesting to see how others do it.
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You have joined vaunted ranks of science youtubers that have done videos using their own pee.
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Honey, wake up! A new Hyperspace Pirate video just dropped! 😊
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Absolutely love your editing straight to the point, but the animation are really fun and actually teach visually too!❤
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3:50 ? I think the reaction equation is wrongly balanced since you should be getting CO(NH2)2 + 2NaOH --> 2NH3 + Na2CO3, so you get 2 moles of Ammonia per mole of Urea. Edit: so you should be expecting 2.5 moles or 42.5g of ammonia from 75g of Urea.
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I found DEF to a great source of cheap urea. You can sometimes get it dirt cheap if it's be sitting around for a while... like $1 for a 5 gallon pail.
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Even boiling things outside, you're going to... piss off... your neighbors. :D
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I need to say: how You brought in the sponsor and the Hyperspace Pee truck really was funny. Happy New Year!
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This channel, Tom's channels, and Chemiolis are the ONLY thing keeping me connected to reality instead of submitting to the void of despair that is the dumper fire we call society.
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3:32 The blue color of copper solution does not come from the presence copper(II) hydroxide - it is barely soluble in water after all. It would just precipitate out as a kind of blue jello. What happens here is formation of a copper(II) ammonia complex, or a kind of situation in which electron-rich ammonia molecules surround and bind to the metal ions in solution, forming often colorful, water-soluble complex ions ([Cu(NH3)4(H2O)2]2+). Please compare the color of your solution to something called Schweizer's reagent. It is a solution of copper(II) sulfate in ammonia, and the azure tetraamminecopper(II) ion is present there.
