Four teenage girls in Nigeria have invented a generator that can use one liter of urine to generate electricity for six hours.
This was after Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and Bello Eniola unveiled their invention during the Maker Faire Africa event in Lagos, Nigeria.
The four explained during their presentation that using urine as fuel was not new, although they displayed a practical way of utilizing urine as fuel.
According to RusselSmith, a leading provider of Integrated Energy Solutions, the four girls came up with the idea of using urine to generate power after reading a story of five family members who died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
All the five members of the family died after inhaling fumes from their generator while asleep.
The invention was as a result of Adebola’s worry about the unfortunate incident and her desire to come up with a long term solution to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning in future.
She then shared the idea with her three friends – Abiola, Oluwatoyin who are also 14-years-old and 15-year-old Eniola, who then embarked on making her dream a realitry.
The four young girls, popularly known as ‘Fantastic Four’ worked jointly on the idea that has now become successful and has obtained recognition even at international levels.
Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four girls explained that they were encouraged by their science teacher, Olaide Lawal, who encouraged them that their imagination can be turned into a reality.
Before settling on urine, the teenage girls had experimented with several electrolytes that could produce power instead of relying on carbon.
They were encouraged by the fact that if hydrogen was the raw material in their generator, the end product would be water instead of carbon monoxide.
Out of curiosity, the young girls were also targeting to use an electrolyte that would be easily available at no cost.
It is therefore at this point that they settled on urine.
“We then reconfigured our petrol-based generator and carried out our first experiment – and then we faced another huge challenge as the cell exploded,” the girls said.
“We kept on checking our process and setup until Mr. Lawal pointed out our error: The hydrogen-oxygen gas mixture was returning to the cell. We then inserted one-way valves into the pipes to ensure a one-directional flow of the gas mixture, and it worked,” they added.
In addition, they explained during the exhibition that when their experiment was disclosed to the public, many people discouraged them, saying it would not work.
Consequently, the Fantastic Four has earned both national and international awards for their urine-powered generators.
For instance, the Lagos State government has expressed interest to fund the invention, to be developed on a large scale for the benefit of homes and communities.
