If you've ever taken a road trip, you've probably relieved yourself in some pretty nasty restrooms, some of which may have had very poor or nonexistent lighting. That's just terrifying.
However, while that experience was probably extremely uncomfortable for you, for those in refugee camps, bathrooms that don't have electricity can be very dangerous places where people, especially women, are at risk for sexual abuse or attack. Luckily, one university in the United Kingdom may have found the solution.
The University of the West of England and Oxfam, a U.K.-based organization that helps people in countries all over the world, have teamed up to create a toilet that will collect urine from students and staff at the university to be converted into fuel for microbial fuel cell stacks that generate electricity. The researchers hope that this "pee-power technology" will be able to light bathroom stalls in refugee camps in order to make it safer for people to go to the bathroom and hopefully prevent attacks.
This is how the "pee-power technology" works, according to what Ioannis Ieropoulos, the director of the Bristol BioEnergy Centre who led the research team, said in a statement:
"The microbial fuel cells work by employing live microbes which feed on urine (fuel) for their own growth and maintenance. The MFC is in effect a system which taps a portion of that biochemical energy used for microbial growth, and converts that directly into electricity — what we are calling urine- or pee power. This technology is about as green as it gets, as we do not need to utilise fossil fuels and we are effectively using a waste product that will be in plentiful supply."
Ieropoulos and his team previously discovered a way to use urine to power mobile phones back in 2013, again using microbial fuel cells to do the trick. Hey, sometimes when your phone is dying, you know you would be that desperate.
The toilet prototype on the University of the West of England campus has been built like the ones Oxfam uses in its refugee camps, so if this trial run turns out to be a success, Oxfam and even other organizations may use it in their camps. A toilet like this could cost about 600 pounds or about $914, according to Ieropoulos.
And of course, this toilet is located near the Student Union Bar on the University of the West of England's campus, so if students ever needed an excuse to drink up, this is definitely a good one.
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