Congrats to UC Irvine National Fuel Cell Research Center scientists and Associate Director Jack Brouwer, who are working with the Orange County Sanitation District to produce pure hydrogen from human waste to power cars of the near future. The waste facility in Fountain Valley already produces hydrogen through the new method, and local drivers will do road tests soon.
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Meanwhile, UCI is working with commercial interests to get new hydrogen filling stations into the marketplace nationally, so, indeed, this is a win-win for academics, private industry, consumers, the sanitation district and the environment.
However, in the interest of full disclosure disclosed only by my pee, er, pea brain, there are five things to dread about vehicles powered by hydrogen derived from human sewage:
1. Having to use …
… a plunger on cold mornings.
2. Insufferable …
… Toyota Pee-us drivers.
[3. Waiting in the fuel-cell line …
… with a cutey behind you, and then when it's your turn you discover the person in front of you, who probably had Mexican, left a disgusting mess, and then as you finish you can't prove to the cutey up next that the first person, and not you, was El Foul-o.
4. Someone always …
… leaving the damn hood up.
5. When you backfire …
… you really backfire.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.