Nigeria teenage girls build a urine powered electricty generator

Nigerian teenagers, Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola and Faleke Oluwatoyin with their urine powered generator. PHOTO/BBC

In a breakthrough, four teenage schoolgirls in Nigeria have invented a urine powered generator that converts one litre of urine into six hours of electricity.

Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and Bello Eniola presented their invention at the Maker Faire Africa entrepreneurs event, in Lagos, using a resource that is free, unlimited and easily obtainable.

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, and one litre of urine provides six hours of electricity.

Many of Africa’s greatest innovators are those who see a need for a particular machine and set about making one, often ploughing years of their lives into perfecting them.

While the economy of Nigeria and by extension Africa continues its’ rapid growth, it is still constrained with an unstable electricity grid – this invention when perfected, will certainly go a long way in providing a cheaper and a cleaner source of electricity.