Four teenage girls create device that turns pee into electricity

14-year-olds Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and 15-year-old Bello Eniola have created a urine power generator, which can “turn one liter of urine into six hours of electricity”. I’m not really sure what “six hours of electricity means”, and I couldn’t find any additional details, but I guess it’s a little more than keeping a light bulb turned on.

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.

The idea of urine as an energy source is not a novel concept. Researchers analyzed the possibility of turning it into fuel and obtaining energy before, but the fact that these girls managed to create this device while in their teens really holds a lot of promise.