Public Toilet in Africa
IN PHOTO: A boy runs past a public toilet with an ANC election poster on it at Kliptown informal settlement, April 21, 2009. Jacob Zuma called for a huge turnout for South Africa's election on Wednesday to give his ruling African National Congress an overwhelming mandate in its toughest test since the end of apartheid. Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

A toilet that generates electricity from urine will soon be used to supply lighting for refugee camps. The toilet was a joint project of researchers from Bristol’s University of the West of England and Oxfam.

Students and employees from the university are being urged to use the working urinal and donate urine, which will be used by microbial fuel cells or MFC, to generate enough electricity to supply indoor lighting.

The project was headed by Professor Ioannis Ieropoulos and together with a team of scientists, they have developed MFCs that thrive off bacteria from urine. In 2013, the scientists used 24 MFCs to prove that enough electricity can be generated to make a mobile phone operational. For the project on the pee-powered urinal, scientists used 288 fuel cells.

In a report from Reuters, Ieropoulos said that the free supply of urine will be ideal for the project and can help many aid agencies out in the field. The prototype toilet resembles those that Oxfam used in refugee camps to achieve a realistic approach to the trial.

“…This technology is a huge step forward. Living in a refugee camp is hard enough without the added threat of being assaulted in dark places at night. The potential of this invention is huge,” said Oxfam’s head of Water and Sanitation Andy Bastable in a report from the Guardian.

The pee-powered toilet is conveniently located near the university’s student bar. Students have tested it and the project turned out to be successful as they found that enough electricity was produced to light up four LED bulbs inside the cubicle. Ieropoulos and the team have also observed that there is a difference in the results of morning and later day urine samples, because the former is “more concentrated”.

Oxfam hopes to send out the first pee-powered toilet in a refugee camp in six months’ time. After testing, it will be distributed first in camps and possibly in electricity-deprived areas.

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