Girls develop urine-powered generator

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LAGOS, Nigeria, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Four girls at a Nigerian school have developed an electricity generator powered by urine in response to the country's energy problems.

The girls, students at the Doregos Private Academy School in Lagos, said they developed the urine-powered generator due to the difficulty in finding fuel to power the generators many people in the country rely on due to the country's frequent outages, Radio France Internationale reported Monday.

"We noticed that many Nigerians, [those whose] businesses depend on a power supply have virtually been put out of business because of the high cost of power, so we decided to make a device that will reduce this problem. We noticed that waste products can be used to generate energy that is why we decided to experiment on urine," said Eniola Bello, one of the students.

The girls said the generator is powered by the hydrogen and oxygen released by the urine.

Adebola Duro-Aina, another student on the team, said about 1 1/2 gallons of urine can power the generator for about 36 hours.

"This urine is being electrolyzed, releasing hydrogen and oxygen gas, and this then goes into our gas tank. Our gas tank here stores the gases, and anytime we need the gas we can open up the gas tank and release the gas and our generator is powered," she said.