When I was in college, I drank a bottle of my own urine for a $5 Barnes and Nobles Gift card, three cans of Natural Light and half of a meatball sub because I was a drunk idiot. It sort of tasted like a warm Powerade. There was also this hot chick that I thought would be impressed by my urine drinking abilities, she never really talked to me again. It’s cool, she’s pregnant now by some dude that’s in prison for trafficking drugs from Mexico to America, so in the end, I think I won.
The greatest thing urine has done in the past ten years is to be consumed by Lyoto Machida. Now according to Dr. Ioannis Ieropoulos at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, urine has accomplished something even greater: the ability to power cellphones.
In an interview with the BBC news, Dr. Ieropoulos claims that harnessing urine for power was a ‘world’s first’ and that while the technology can only power a cell phone battery, he hopes to harness the technology in every bathroom to power showers, lighting — virtually everything inside.
One product that we can be sure of an unending supply is our own urine.By harnessing this power as urine passes through a cascade of microbial fuel cells (MFCs), we have managed to charge a Samsung mobile phone.
So far the microbial fuel power stack that we have developed generates enough power to enable SMS messaging, web browsing and to make a brief phone call.
Making a call on a mobile phone takes up the most energy, but we will get to the place where we can charge a battery for longer periods.
The concept has been tested and it works – it’s now for us to develop and refine the process so that we can develop MFCs to fully charge a battery.
For those scratching their head at the concept of a microbial fuel cell, it’s basically a device that turns organic matter into electricity through the metabolism of micro-organisms. Basically what we’re trying to tell you is Dr. Ioannis Ieropoulos’s urine technology just put a massive plot hole in Kevin Costner’s ‘Waterworld.’
