A team of OU faculty and students developed technology that converts urine into water and energy
Converting urine into clean water and energy on Mars might sound like an uncomfortable scene from a science fiction movie.
But a team of Ohio University faculty and students are developing such a technology.
The technology, called “Pee2Power,” was in the running last month to be sent to Mars as part of the Mars One University Challenge.
It ultimately wasn’t chosen by Mars One, a nonprofit foundation, which considered OU and nine other university projects for its first unmanned mission to the planet in 2018.
Seed, a team from Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands that aims to grow the first plant on Mars, was selected.
Although OU’s Pee2Power equipment wasn’t chosen for Mars, the technology is still being developed. The project uses a technology called Urine GreenBox that converts the ammonia in urine into hydrogen power and clean water.
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The team is led by Gerardine Botte, an OU professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and includes several graduate and undergraduate students from the Russ College of Engineering and Technology. Botte said the team started working on the project in August of last year.
Kent Shields, CEO of E3 Clean Technologies, the Athens-based company behind the device, said GreenBox has many practical applications on Earth as well.
The technology can clean up ammonia contamination from fertilizer and animal feeding waste on farms, he said.
The technology doesn’t require high energy and can run on solar power combined with the additional hydrogen power.
“The biggest thing is that you can make clean water, that’s what I think was really appealing to the judges,” Shields said. “It has a true practical potential in that kind of a specialized environment.”
The GreenBox device looks like a small car battery, Shields said, and has many applications because it is modular and can be “scaled up” to different sizes. For example, the technology can be used by the army in arid areas to supplement bringing in water, he said.
“It’s great for the environment and I think it has great commercial opportunities as well,” Shields said. “It’s a great combination of being able to do something good for the world and make some money at the same time.”
Shields said his company and the university have a strong relationship that leads to further innovation in their technology.
“We’ve had very, very strong support from OU,” Shields said. “They help with the technology and they see a lot of potential in it.”
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