There’s nothing like young minds unfettered by
the process of trying to get an idea through corporate approval for rising to a
challenge. Remember the four students from Doregos Private Academy in Lagos who achieved fame last year for their urine-powered generators? Apparently the idea hasn’t quite caught on
yet because the generators create a rather unpleasant smell. At least that’s what we’re told by
contemporaries from the same college who were in Los Angeles in May with another idea for generating cheap electricity which they showed off at the
Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
Opeyemi Belo and Kpakpando Akaeze have taken
a similar generator to the one which was converted to run on urine and
re-engineered it for a more conventional – but almost equally abundant – pair
of alternative power sources: discarded motor oil or ionised water. The generator is modified to include a catalytic
cracking chamber which stores the oil or water. It’s fired up with petrol for
five minutes, in order to produce energy for heating the catalytic chamber up
and starting a reaction via electrolysis. Once the reaction is underway,
hydrogen or propane is released from the chamber and used to fuel the generator
– waste heat from the generator keeps the reaction going.
According to the pair, just over a litre of
ionised water can keep the generator running for six hours, compared to seven
and a half litres of petrol. Carbon emissions are also reduced from just under
2000ppm to 2.2ppm parts using ionised water, and 524ppm for used motor oil.
Ionising the water is a simple and cheap process, the boys say, as they simply
need to add a sodium sulphate salt. Apparently, it was the smell of the urine
generator that led the boys to seek alternative fuels with similar properties
which would also produce hydrogen under electrolysis.
Sadly, Belo and Akaeze couldn’t bring the
generator with them to LA – we’re going to follow up for more details, and
hopefully to see the miracle generator in action. There’s obvious questions
around its safety and sustainability that need to be asked – after all, it’s
impossible to get more energy out of the electrolytic engine than is put in –
but it’s a promising project all the same and fantastic to see these kids
innovating with it.
From the project description:
“The generator uses gasoline, waste
black engine oil and hydrogen-oxygen mixture. The spark timing of the generator
has been retarded from 110 to 80, allowing for variation of fuel from liquid
gasoline to gases. The generator is started initially with gasoline, to
generate enough heat to crack the waste oil and sufficient gases in the
electrolytic cell after which the spark-time is auto adjusted and the
completion of this action is indicated by a green light emitting diode after
five minutes. With this, the gasoline supply is cut off and gases from the
catalytic chamber or electrolytic cell is connected automatically.
“The thermal catalytic cracking chamber,
insulated with a fiber resin containing 2 meter long 12mm diameter copper wire
inserted on a rotor and powered by the heat and speed of the gases from
the exhaust pipe of the generator cracked the waste black engine oil to ethane
and propane. The ionised water chamber containing 96% water, 2% Na2SO4 and 2%
NaNO3 is electrolysed by the 5A current from the direct current output of the
generator. The end product of this electrolytic cell is hydrogen-oxygen mixture
in the ratio 2:1. An analysis of the power output indicates comparative same
output with conventional gasoline powered generators while the carbon monoxide
and the cost of running the generator with ionized water or the gases the gases
generated from waste oil is significantly reduced.
“The project if further developed will go a long
way towards alleviating the problem of erratic power supply in many developing
economies.”
Culled form htxt.africa
Culled form htxt.africa
No comments:
Post a Comment