Urine-Powered Generator from Nigeria

Compiled by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News
November 10, 2012

Four teenage girls have invented and demonstrated at the fourth annual Maker Faire Africa a generator powered by urine.

"What these kids are doing is taking urea electrolysis and making hydrogen and then using that hydrogen to make electricity", according to Gerardine Botte, a chemical engineer at Ohio University who invented the urea electrolysis process. [1]

According to TheNextWeb, 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.
1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.

According to NBC’s John Roach, expectations should be managed.

Botte said the technology is most practical as a way to make the wastewater treatment process more energy efficient, not as a primary power source. Wastewater treatment plants consume energy. Since urea is already being collected by such facilities, Botte says it makes sense to extract hydrogen from it. This in turn can be used to generate electricity, thus reducing the amount of outside energy required to run the wastewater treatment process.