FOR KIDS: Pee is for power

The water in urine can be a source of hydrogen for electrical generators

By Sid Perkins

Web edition: May 28, 2013

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Plentiful resource

These three teens designed a system that uses urine to produce a fuel. Generators that run on this fuel, not gasoline, can avoid spewing carbon monoxide, a toxic pollutant.

Credit: Patrick Thornton, SSP

To the body, urine is a waste. But to society, it could be a major resource, reports a trio of student inventors from Nigeria. They developed a system to produce fuel from urine. They do this by breaking down the water in urine to get hydrogen and oxygen. That hydrogen can power an electricity generator. It?s also clean and readily available, the teens note.

?Where we live, almost everyone has a generator? to provide electricity at home, explains Zainab Bello. She, Adebola Duro-Aina and Oluwatoyin Faleke attend the Doregos Private Academy in Lagos. The teens presented their design May 13 in Phoenix, Ariz., at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair. The Society for Science & the Public, which created the fair in 1950, still runs the competition. (SSP also publishes Science News?and?Science News for Kids.)

Visit the new Science News for Kids website and read the full story: Pee is for power.?

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350668/title/FOR_KIDS_Pee_is_for_power

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