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Pee-Powered Cellphone Charger Heralded As Game Changer In Renewables

The achievement is being heralded as a world first.

All that urine flush down the toilet could one day be utilized as a sustainable source of fuel to power a device increasing more important to modern-day life: our smartphones.

Scientists at the University of West England announced last week that they successfully converted 600 millilitres of pee into fuel to power a phone with enough battery life to sustain a three-hour call after a six-hour charge time.

The achievement is being heralded as a world first.

The news comes three years after the school’s Ioannis Ieropoulos said the use of urine-fed microbial fuel cell stacks (MFC) to power phones is possible.

Could 'revolutionize' how we create electricity

“The world produces huge volumes of urine and if we can harness the potential power of that waste using microbial fuel cell, we can revolutionize the way we make electricity,” Dr. Mirella Di Lorenzo, a researcher associated with the project explained in Elsevier.

Despite the current drawback of expensive material costs (the cathode is partly made with platnium), there’s exciting building around by this novel alternative to fossil fuels.

Researchers say development of this urine-fed charging system technology is a possible game changer for people living off-grid, providing a new renewable and readily available fuel.

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