Imagine powering your home with waste bi-products. You could essentially power you home with pee. Adult human being produces 1-2 liters of urine per day. 1 liter is enough to power a small generator for 6 hours. How do we know this? A 14 year old girl and her friends from Nigeria, Africa created a system that separates the hydrogen and oxygen in urine, purifies the hydrogen and uses it to power a generator.

The amount of electricity produced is not shown, but judging from the size of the generator it’s probably at least a few hundred Watts. That’s more than enough to power small electronics and LED lighting in your home.

“…The Ohio University scientists who developed the urine technology found that attaching hydrogen to nitrogen in urine allowed it to be stored without the strict requirements of ordinary hydrogen, and allowed it to be released with less electricity (0.037 volts versus 1.23 volts needed for water)….” “…One cow can provide enough energy to supply hot water for 19 houses….” http://www.nbcnews.com/id/31805166/#.UqzbDfRDvbI

Average urine production in adult humans is about 1 – 2 L per day – Wikipedia The system works like this: Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.

The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.

The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.

This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator. Maker Faire Africa

via: http://makerfaireafrica.com/2012/11/06/a-urine-powered-generator/

Keep in mind this is only using 1 liter of pee for 6 hours. A family of four would obviously produce much more than 1 liter of urine per day.

YUCK FACTOR!

Lets face it. Powering your home with pee sounds pretty yucky. On the yuck factor scale (1-10) it would probably be a 5 or 6.

However, I think if you could generate 2000 watts of power each day for 24 hours, and power your entire home on what you normally flush down the toilet, you’d do it wouldn’t you!? If you can power a small generator on 1 liter of pee for 6 hours, then 4 liters will power it for 24 hours. Producing more than enough to charge a battery bank for energy storage and use.

You can purchase a small 2000 watt generator for less than $500. A small battery system for $500 or so, and convert your gas generator to run on hydrogen for about $100-$200 in parts. Converting it to run on hydrogen isn’t hard and you can find the information online.

Download this PDF file on the process (PDF Download) Urea electrolysis: direct hydrogen production from urine

Average U.S. Electricity Bill (2013)

If you look at it like this, electricity costs money. Each month the average American spends $395 per month for electricity during the Summer months.

Diagram: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11831

YOU’RE LITERALLY FLUSHING YOUR MONEY DOWN THE TOILET

Would you flush $400 in clean crisp 100 dollar bills down the toilet? Of course not, but that’s exactly what you’re doing if you aren’t reusing your waste to generate electricity.

Instead of flushing your money down the toilet, why not reuse it for generating electricity for your home? It makes perfect sense. Captured waste can power your home efficiently and affordably. There is ZERO doubt about that. The only question is how much will it cost, and can you get past the yuck factor…?

The money you save would be well worth it.

Even if your electricity bill is only $200/month, you’re still literally pissing away $1200 PER YEAR when you do not reuse your waste.

What excuse will you use for not doing it? Because it’s yucky? Because you don’t have money for the equipment? From the perspective of affordability, you almost can’t afford NOT to build your own pee powered generator.

If you can’t go out and buy the equipment right now, save up for it by cutting back your electricity usage, turn off the lights during the day, eat veggies instead of cooking huge meals every day. When you do cook, cook large meals once a week or every other week, that can be frozen or stored for a while without using too much energy. Learn how to can and preserve your own food. Stop eating out for 1 month. Stop going to Starbucks every morning, and put that money in your generator fund savings account.

With a little ingenuity and creative thinking you can save enough money to get the equipment to power your home.

So, how about it?

You ready to power your home with pee?

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References:

Urea electrolysis: direct hydrogen production from urine (PDF)

Pee Powered Batteries: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/31805166/#.UqzbDfRDvbI

Pee Powered Batteries: http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/pee-powered-battery-now-available.html