Brainhouse School in Nairobi is benefiting from PEE POWER®, thanks to a system providing power for night time lighting in the school’s toilet facility. The school is located in Mathare North slum in the Kenyan capital and houses approximately 700 pupils, ranging from pre-school to sixth form, many of whom live in the slum.
The team of Bristol BioEnergy Centre (BBiC) researchers began setting up the system during a field trial that began in June at the school. The electricity that is generated powers LED lights situated along the central corridor of the toilet block, illuminating two rows of seven cubicles.
The toilet block was built by charity ACEF (Akamba Children’s Education Fund). The scientists then installed a system that channels the urine from the boys’ urinals down into a stack containing a series of microbial fuel cells (MFCs). The stack contains 20 modules, each with 22 individual cells. The electricity produced from the cells can power lighting systems and charge mobile phones.
The project follows the successful installation of the technology in Seseme Girls’ School in rural Uganda, where the electricity produced from waste water provided lighting outside a previously unlit toilet block and inside four cubicles.
Subsequent data retrieved from feedback found that pupils at the school benefited from the system in numerous ways. It meant they felt safer when accessing the toilet after dark and led to a decrease in male intruders reported in the area. The girls were also able to spot any potentially dangerous creatures such as snakes and spiders in and around the cubicles.
“The school in Nairobi is a different type of institution to the one in Uganda,”
says Dr Gill Davies, who is project manager and part of BBiC.
“It’s in a slum area and provides education for local children who wouldn’t necessarily have access to education otherwise, including some orphans who live at the school. Hence the need for lighting in the toilets at night.”
The first trial in Seseme school has led to the scientists refining the fuel cells. Professor Ioannis Ieropoulos, says: “Our approach for optimisation has been to downsize individual MFCs and then multiply them in modules and stacks. This renders the technology modular, and thus appropriately scalable to meet the needs of different environments.
“We are envisaging a future where MFCs are deployed widely in both the developing and developed worlds, offering the benefit of free electricity and a way of cleaning wastewater before it reaches the environment.”
As part of the field study at the school in Uganda, the scientists have hosted a one-day workshop with the school’s sixth formers, to teach them how the technology works and enable them to build their own MFCs.
Professor Ieropoulos:
“It feels rewarding to know that the pupils are now learning about a technology that they didn’t know anything about before. They see it working in practice and this gives them the confidence that what they are learning about is real. “This is a good example of how something real can be used as an educational tool for younger minds to think more creatively about how to solve some of our problems, while enabling them to improve the livelihoods of those involved.”
Other field trials are in the pipeline and currently under consideration are sites in India, Nepal and South Africa.