Teenagers in Africa Create Electricity Generator That Runs on Urine

Source: Earth Heal – News For An Earth In Transition

Teenagers in Africa Create Electricity Generator That Runs on Urine

- Believe it or not, electricity is one of the most abundant resources on the planet, the only thing that is difficult is finding ways to tap into this energy safely.

Many inventors and scientists since Nikola Tesla have discovered ways to solve this problem effectively, but due to the radical change that this would bring to the social structure, these technologies have always been suppressed.

In Africa where central power grids are few and far in between, generators are an everyday part of life. Just recently 4 teenage girls created one of the most cost effective generators that you could possibility think of in terms of fuel, because it’s fuel source, human urine, is widely abundant.

The urine powered generator made its debut at Maker Faire Africa in Lagos, Nigeria, this week.  According to the Maker Faire Africa website, this is how the generator works:

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

    • The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, and then into a gas cylinder, which looks similar to the kind used for outdoor barbecue grills.

    • The gas cylinder pushes the filtered hydrogen into another cylinder that contains liquid borax, in order to remove moisture from the gas. Borax is a natural mineral, commonly used in laundry detergent.

    • The hydrogen is pushed into a power generator in the final step of the process.

The only serious disadvantage to using a hydrogen based fuel source is that it causes and increased risk of explosion. However, the girls have even considered a safety mechanism to prevent this from happening.

An article at Cnet.com explains how this was achieved:

Read more…