My colleague Erik Hersman of AfriGadget.com/Ushahidi.com recently attended MakerFaireAfrica in Lagos (AfriGadget was part of this event) and ran across a urine-powered generator which he wrote about here: makerfaireafrica.com/2012/11/06/a-urine-powered-generator/

A urine powered generator by whiteafrican, on Flickr

The BBC also picked up this story in the coverage of the event www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20167122 and the claim that the four girls had "invented" this technology, and also how it should work, generated quite some comments within a few days. A blogger / tech guy from Australia also publicly tried to examine the "how does this actually work?"-part on his site: nathan-lee.com/blog/2012/11/07/urine-pow...yre-taking-the-piss/

I am yet to understand how this really works (the presented setup, that is), but maybe one of you out there can shed some light on this. Also, this being a forum on the reuse of sanitary products, it's probably good to share it with you. All I can say atm is that any publicity that emphasises the value of urine and faeces (waste => food) is good for us, no matter if this particular setup really works. Or?

Hi everyone,

My colleague sent me this video today, apparently claiming that Nigerian students have invented a way to produce electricity from urine. The video is in French though, so I did not really understand how the mechanism was supposed to work.

The link is here, and I would appreciate a synposis from a French speaker as to the mechanism and whether it is actually viable! www.lemonde.fr/afrique/video/2013/03/06/....152227018273071#_=_

Thanks and Regards,

Julian Doczi

Peelectricity!!!

“This urine is being electrolysed, releasing hydrogen and oxygen gas, and this then goes into our gas tank. Our gas tank here stores the gases, and anytime we need the gas we can open up the gas tank and release the gas and our generator is powered.”
www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20121125-niger...ower-shortages-urine

• Unveiled at the Maker Faire Africa in Lagos, the device is able to provide six hours of electricity with one liter of urine.
• Urine is first put into an electrolytic cell to separate out the hydrogen.
• Hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification and gets pushed into a gas cylinder.
• The gas cylinder pushes the hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
• And finally, the purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator to create electricity.

designtaxi.com/news/354315/Nigerian-Teen...lectrical-Generator/

I like the last line on the report on the Maker Faire Africa report:



It sounds like an electrical current is needed for the electrolysis. I don't know how to calculate the electrical input needed verses the output of the generator, but I'm guessing the latter is not necessarily greater than the former.

Hi all,

It is very amazing and a great project.
For people who doesn't read in french, I made this introduction translation

In Nigeria, Lagos, a 14 year old schoolgirl has developed a generator of electricity fuelled with urine rather than the diesel, expensive and polluting.
In a megalopolis of about 15 million inhabitant who live at the rate of the power cuts, the project still experimental stage, amazes but arouses hopes.

Best regards