In 2009, the founders of the international organization Maker Faire Africa envisioned an environment where inventors and problem solvers could meet annually to focus on finding simple breakthroughs to solve immediate crises in Africa and then determine ways to propagate the solutions. This year’s Maker Faire Africa convened in Lagos, Nigeria.
At the 2012 meeting, three 14 year old girls, Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and one 15 year old girl, Bello Eniola discussed and demonstrated their invention – a urine-powered generator. Their discovery: 1 liter of urine can produce 6 hours of electricity.
The young inventors’ generator uses urine creatively, putting it into an electrolytic cell. The urine is then broken down into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen.
A water filter purifies the hydrogen and pushes it through a gas cylinder. Then, another gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, thereby removing all the moisture from the gas. The generator then uses the purified hydrogen to generate electricity.
The world is in desperate need of environmentally friendly sustainable energy, and a new generation of young visionaries is finding solutions. The age of the girls responsible for this breakthrough is encouraging. If these four girls are able to invent such a useful device so young, imagine what they can invent in the future.
[via thenextweb]
