Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Urine-Powered Generator Invented by Four Teenage Girls in Africa

Photo courtesy: © Maker Faire Africa

Everywhere you go, people gotta pee. That's just a fact of our human existence. But instead of just getting flushed down the toilet, human urine could also be a feedstock for a truly unique renewable energy source.

Imagine being able generate six hours of electricity from a single liter of urine. Thanks to the innovative minds of four teenage girls in Africa, it's no longer necessary to just imagine it - they've done it.

A urine-powered generator was presented at Maker Faire Africa in Lagos by Duro-Aina Adebola (age 14), Akindele Abiola (14), Faleke Oluwatoyin (14) and Bello Eniola (15), and according to the Maker Faire Africa blog, the system works like this:

•Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.

•The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.

•The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.

•This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.

Photo courtesy: © Maker Faire Africa

Here's hoping this catches on and becomes the start of something big.

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