Your next trip to the bathroom could be more valuable than you think.
Researchers have been doing some pretty inventive things with
human waste. Recently, a team of researchers from the
Bristol Robotics Laboratory in England figured out a way to
power a cellphone with urine.
Now, researchers from that same lab have figured out a way to
run robots on urine.
The team, led by Peter Walters, has created a device that mimics
the performance of the human heart. Only now, instead of pumping
blood through humans, it’s pumping urine through robots and
producing electricity along the way.
Role of microbial fuel cells
Similar to previous generations of robots created by The
Bristol Robotics Lab, the future robots will run on microbial
fuel cells (MFCs) and use microorganisms to digest waste organic
matter to generate electricity.
MFCs are bio-electrochemical transducers that convert the energy
found in organic matter to electricity. The live microorganisms
inside of the MFCs break down the urine and create an
electricity by-product.
Currently, EcoBots, as they’ve been named, run on conventional
motor pumps that are prone to mechanical failure and blockages.
So, the team developed this heart-like device to improve
functioning.
“We speculate that in the future, urine-powered EcoBots could
perform environmental monitoring tasks such as measuring
temperature, humidity, and waste water quality,” said Walters.
Future robots could be recharged simply with urine from a public
restroom. If the robot finds itself in a rural area, urine
collected on a farm would suffice too.
How it works
The “heart” can hold up to 24.5 mL of liquid and like a
human heart compresses a pump to force out the liquid (in this
case urine, not blood). The device also uses artificial muscles
made from shape memory alloys, a smart material that “remembers”
its original shape.
When the artificial muscles are heated with an electric current,
they compress and expel the fluid. Once the muscles cool down,
they return to their original shape so the device can relax and
allow new fluid to flow into it for the next round.
The researchers found that just 24 microbial fuel cells that fed
on urine produced enough electricity to charge a capacitor. The
energy stored in the capacitor was then used to start another
cycle of pumping.
Future urine robots
The team’s next tasks involve improving the device’s
efficiency and figuring out how to incorporate them into
MFC-powered robots.