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