Four Secondary School Students Present The Urine Powered Generator!

Four students of a private secondary school in Lagos have put chemistry and the power of energy conversion to play by using urine—as fuel, to power an electric generator. This was displayed at a Maker Faire Innovation Competition that was held a few days ago in Lagos. The girls – Duro-Aina Adebola (14), Akindele Abiola (14), Faleke Oluwatoyin (14) and Bello Eniola (15) – showed that 1 litre of urine can give 6 hours of electricity. According to the Maker Faire website, 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.