Comment by blueflow
2 days ago
There is the smoking gun:
> resulting in ammonia concentrations ranging from 25 to 120 μM in 1 hour
Not usable as fuel. You'd need to separate the ammonium from the water using a energy intensive process (cooking or such).
At that point in the presentation, I'd probably sarcastically ask if they were accidentally measuring how many dogs mark their territory in a 100 foot radius of the device, per hour, via their collector.
They did attempt to control for the ammonia concentration in the collected water without their catalyst. But they did not try to calculate the equilibrium concentration of ammonia in water exposed to the atmosphere.
Direct solar energy output, perhaps. Seems potentially simple to boil it off with heat.
You can catalytically oxidize ammonia in water solution. The energy generated is more than enough to overcome the energy released during solvation.