By Francesca Hangeior
Four Nigerian teenage girls have invented a generator powered which can use a litre of urine to produce six hours of electricity.
The girls – Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and Bello Eniola displayed the invention at the annual event Maker Faire Africa, held in Lagos.
Four Nigerian teenage girls have invented a generator powered which can use a litre of urine to produce six hours of electricity.
The girls – Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and Bello Eniola displayed the invention at the annual event Maker Faire Africa, held in Lagos.
RusselSmith, a leading provider of Integrated Energy Solutions disclosed this, adding that Adebola, a 14-year-old said the idea of using urine to produce electricity started when she read an article about a family of five who lost their lives.
She said that the family members died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning as they inhaled fumes emanating from their generator while asleep.
She said she was worried by the incident thinking about how she could help to prevent similar occurences from happening in the future concluding that the way out was to find another power source that does not release carbon monoxide.
Adebola said she related the idea with her three friends – Abiola, Oluwatoyin who are also 14-years-old and Eniola, a 15-year-old.
The four friends named themselves “Fantastic Four” and began their journey to develop a solution which later on became successful and celebrated even on a global scale.
The Fantastic Four stated that they told their science teacher, Olaide Lawal, about their idea, who encouraged them that the indication was possible.
With this inspiration, the teen girls began experimenting with possible materials that could produce power instead of relying on carbon. They said that it dawned on them that rocket engines run on hydrogen.
According to the girls, the premise of their invention was that if hydrogen was the raw material in their generator, the end product would be water. The team said after they experimented with water, they encountered a hurdle.
The team revealed that because water produces low hydrogen, they concluded that if they electrolysed water, the generator would lose 1.25 volts per cycle.