Palakkad: A team led by Dr. Praveena Gangadharan, Assistant Professor at IIT Palakkad, has discovered that electricity can be produced from human urine. In a landmark development in renewable energy research, Dr. Praveena Gangadharan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Palakkad, has devised a revolutionary solution, utilizing urine to generate renewable energy and produce biofertilizer simultaneously.
In an effort to address the escalating global energy demand and promote sustainable practices, the innovative solution of the IIT Palakkad team involves a urine-fed, self-driven stacked electrochemical resource recovery reactor, contributing to both electricity generation and biofertilizer production.
Dr. Praveena Gangadharan stated that electricity and bio-fertilizer can be generated simultaneously. Alongside her team of Research Scholars, including Sangeetha V, Rinu Anna Koshy, and Dr. Sreejith PM, Project Scientist, they harnessed the ionic strength of urine and induced electrochemical reactions to create electricity and biofertilizer rich in nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). Praveena Gangadharan stated that they found higher levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in human urine in their experiment.
During the experiment, the research team produced 500 milliwatts (mW) of electricity, 7–12 volts per cycle, resulting in 10 grams of fertilizer every 24-48 hours from five liters of urine. This electricity could be used to charge LED lamps and mobile phones. Besides electricity, the bio-fertilizer produced can also be used for sustainable farming.
The experiment, titled ‘Stale urine catalyzed resource recovery from source-separated urine using a magnesium-air fuel cell,’ was published in the journal Separation and Purification Technology. The research team acknowledges that the research is funded by the Science for Equity Empowerment and Development (SEED) division under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India (GOI).
Published article: Stale urine catalysed resource recovery from source separated urine using magnesium air fuel cell: Insights into the mechanism, its implications and challenges
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