urine powered generator

Four teenage girls from Africa have created a urine powered generator

As a 14 year old, when we got down to doing some experiments or making something, the things that we could come up with was probably use the electric motor of our broken remote-control car in a motor boat that will sink within fifteen minutes of being in water (it was not adequately water proofed!) or make a steam boat from one of those many science experiments. Did you ever think of making a wind mill or a solar powered car or generate electricity from your pee!

urine powered generator

Four teenage girls, Duro-Aina Adebola (14), Akindele Abiola (14), Faleke Oluwatoyin (14) and Bello Eniola (15), who presented this unique device at The Maker Faire Africa this year in Lagos, does just that. It converts 1 litre of urine to generate 6 hours of electricity!

Here’s how it works:

  • Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the urea into nitrogen, water, and 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.

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