Teenage Girls Invent Pee-Powered Generator

© 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.

© Maker Faire Africa

Here's hoping these world-changing teenagers get some further mentoring and financial backing to take their invention to the next level!