Two Truths and a Lie by Ammi-Joan Paquette

Author:Ammi-Joan Paquette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

C.PEE POWER!

One thing is for sure: what goes in must come out!

As long as people are alive, we’ll be creating human waste in the form of urine (pee). But wouldn’t it be cool if, instead of just flushing it all away, we could convert some of that waste into fuel? Talk about a sustainable and eco-friendly source of energy! Scientists from a variety of fields are working on accomplishing just that.

Professor Ioannis Ieropoulos, from the University of the West of England, is one of them. For 12 years, he and his team worked with a special type of battery called a microbial fuel cell (MFC). In MFCs, bacteria eat fuel and produce electricity. The trick was to find which fuel will produce the most energy. So Ieropoulos and his team fed MFCs all kinds of different fuels—wastewater, rotten fruit, prawn shells, dead insects, grass clippings, etc. Then they measured how much power each was able to generate.

Guess what came out number one? You got it—urine!

With urine as the fuel, the team was able to use MFCs to generate enough electricity to power a cell phone for text messaging, Web browsing, and to make a brief phone call. The electricity output from MFCs is still relatively small, but over the next few years Ieropoulos and his team hope to develop and refine the process enough to fully charge a cell phone battery.

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