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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Sci­ence and So­ci­ety

Using urine to create electricity

by

20140316

Elec­tric­i­ty can be gen­er­at­ed from a va­ri­ety of sources. In T&T, it is from nat­ur­al gas, while diesel fu­el is the main en­er­gy source used the in pow­er plants through­out the oth­er Caribbean is­lands.Waste can al­so be used to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty, both on a large scale for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es or for small-scale spe­cial pur­pos­es. On farms, an­i­mal waste and or­gan­ic mat­ter, in­clud­ing food, have been used to pro­duce bio­gas fu­el.Re­cent­ly, at­ten­tion has been fo­cused on us­ing urine to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty.

The ca­pac­i­ty of the hu­man blad­der is ap­prox­i­mate­ly half a litre, and it is es­ti­mat­ed that, on av­er­age, a per­son pro­duces one to two litres of urine dai­ly (one US gal­lon is 3.785 litres). It would be rea­son­able to es­ti­mate that in schools, uni­ver­si­ties, shop­ping malls and en­ter­tain­ment com­plex­es the dai­ly vol­ume pro­duc­tion would be quite sig­nif­i­cant. The same would be true for spe­cial events like Car­ni­val.

Urine is a source of elec­trolytes and po­ten­tial en­er­gy which can be ex­ploit­ed to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. Elec­trolytes con­tain ions, which al­low for the con­duc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty. Think car bat­ter­ies.The draw­back with bat­ter­ies is that the chem­i­cals that re­act to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty are stored with­in the bat­ter­ies and hence when they are de­plet­ed the bat­ter­ies die.

In fu­el cells, how­ev­er, the chem­i­cals are stored out­side and hence can be re­plen­ished. This has re­sult­ed in fu­el cells be­ing used in spe­cial­ty ve­hi­cles and emer­gency back­up pow­er sys­tems. They form the ba­sis for the pro­posed hy­dro­gen econ­o­my.

Mail On­line and sev­er­al oth­er sources re­port of re­search work at a Re­search Ro­bot­ics Lab in Bris­tol that pro­duces elec­tric­i­ty from urine. This is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ven­ture be­tween the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Eng­land and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol. Urine was fed to mi­cro­bial fu­el cells and enough elec­tric­i­ty was gen­er­at­ed for the charg­ing of cells phones.

Mi­crobes, the old­est life forms on earth, are mi­cro-or­gan­isms, like virus­es and bac­te­ria. Mi­cro­bial fu­el cells con­vert or­gan­ic mat­ter di­rect­ly in­to elec­tric­i­ty by util­is­ing the me­tab­o­lism of live or­gan­isms. This re­search and de­vel­op­ment ef­fort is in its ear­ly stages and looks promis­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in those ar­eas of the world that are with­out elec­tric grids. It is be­ing fund­ed by the Melin­da and Bill Gates Foun­da­tion, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that works with part­ner or­gan­i­sa­tions world­wide to tack­le crit­i­cal prob­lems fac­ing mankind.

In a Mak­er Faire event some two years ago, four teenage Niger­ian girls demon­strat­ed a urine-fed elec­trolyt­ic cell that pro­duced hy­dro­gen to pow­er an elec­tric gen­er­a­tor. No de­tailed mea­sure­ments were giv­en.Last year, it was al­so re­port­ed that dur­ing the Rio car­ni­val, portable toi­lets were out­fit­ted with tur­bines (mi­cro-tur­bines, one pre­sumes), which gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty as the urine flowed over them. The elec­tric­i­ty was stored in bat­ter­ies. Again no tech­ni­cal de­tails were giv­en.

There are al­so de­signs for eco-uri­nals. De­vel­op­ers at the Zhe­jian Uni­ver­si­ty in Chi­na are propos­ing to use the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by their eco-uri­nal to pow­er the in­frared sen­sors and flush­ing mech­a­nisms. Clear­ly, the gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric­i­ty from urine is com­mand­ing the at­ten­tion of re­searchers world­wide.

The dis­pos­al of waste is a glob­al chal­lenge. In­no­v­a­tive and cre­ative so­lu­tions are re­quired. It does help to look at old­er civil­i­sa­tions to see how they dealt with sim­i­lar us­es of en­vi­ron­men­tal and en­er­gy sus­tain­abil­i­ty. They tend­ed to view waste as a re­source that must be used.

The ad­van­tage that mod­ern man pos­sess­es is that he has su­pe­ri­or tech­nol­o­gy and this must be used to con­vert tra­di­tion­al waste prod­ucts to sources of prod­ucts and ser­vices. This ap­proach is fur­ther fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the dif­fu­sion of new and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to homes and com­mu­ni­ties.


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