If you’re pissed off at power prices, this may be a natural:
In the past week or so since Hurricane Sandy devastated a large portion of the East Coast, we’ve seen people get creative about ways to harness power. From sharing outlets on the street, to using bikes as generators, people have come up with innovative ways to charge their cell phones and other items necessary for everyday life. While these ideas were resourceful, none of them are nearly as outside-the-box as what four African teenage girls came up with: a pee-powered generator.
During the Maker Faire Africa, in Lagos, Nigeria on November 5 and 6, 14-year-olds Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and 15-year-old Bello Eniola presented their unique proposal. According to The Next Web, 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.
Go the link to read the rest.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.