Scientists Found a Way to Charge Your Smartphone With Urine Now that's innovation at its finest.
By Rose Leadem
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Lose the power cord, soon you might be able to charge your phone with -- your pee.
Yep. You read that correctly, scientists in England have developed a way to transform urine into electricity.
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Using a special machine called a "microbial fuel cell" that contains waste-eating electro-active bacteria, scientists at Bristol Robotics Lab have created a way to charge phones and power some lights using urine. So how does it work? The small bacteria consume the waste out of urine, and as a result, electrons are left over as a byproduct. By being put through an electrical circuit that the scientists created, these electrons create electricity.
A good amount of electricity, in fact. Only two liters of urine can produce 30 to 40 milliwatts of power -- enough to slowly charge a smartphone, power a phone's display or power lights for portable toilets.
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And who better to test the new innovation than beer-drinking music festival goers? That's right -- the engineers will debut their new pee-to-power invention in portable restrooms at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset this week.
In the long-run, scientists hope the new invention will be used in poorer countries to create clean and renewable energy.
