In parallel with his studies, a Breton student launched Collecte d’urine by L., a company made in France which could revolutionize the use of WCs.
His name is Louison Janée and his name could remain in people’s minds as that of a major inventor of the 21st century. At 21 years old, this student has already lived several lives. In addition to his studies in hydrogen energy at the National School of Engineering Sciences of South Brittany (Ensibs), he is notably involved in an association. He regularly participates as a volunteer in the Pont-du Rock festival which takes place in Malestroit, in Morbihan. As environmental manager of the event, he is responsible for dry toilets and collecting and sorting festival-goers’ waste. The ideal opportunity for this enthusiast of environmental issues to look into the management of toilet flows and to test some innovations.
By installing urinals for women within the grounds of the festival, which will take place on August 2 and 3 this year, the student wondered what could be done with all this urine. And the response led to the creation of his company, simply called “Collection d’urine by L.”. Louison Janée wishes to recover its raw material during events such as festivals, thanks to the marketing of specific urinals for women during major events. All with the aim of recycling the precious liquid.
Firstly, the use of such urinals would have a positive impact on water consumption. A toilet flush consumes on average 9 liters of water, which corresponds to 36 liters of water per day and per person on average. On the scale of a network of toilets installed during a festival lasting several days, thousands of liters are usually used. However, with Louison’s urinal, only one liter would be enough.
Then, the young multi-hat engineer plans to recover and recycle urine, particularly in the agricultural sector. “It is an effective fertilizer. These first two activities will, I hope, allow me to finance the bacteria cell project which is very expensive,” he declared in West France.
Because the real project is to create a “microbial fuel cell”, in other words to produce green electricity created by urine. In summary, according to Louison Janée, “the urine will eat the bacteria to make electrons and produce electricity. The urea, ammonia and nitrogen contained in the urine feed the bacteria. We can also look at another project, moreover, manufacturing hydrogen by electrolysis of urea”. His experience leads him to say that the installation of these urinals would first make it possible to directly meet the lighting needs of festivals and then, “by accumulating batteries, we could perhaps power a very energy-intensive stage”.
This is not the first time that a project of this style has been developed. In England, researchers have invented “Pee power” urinals which allow urine to be used to produce electricity from micro-fuel cells. And about fifteen years ago now, a researcher at Ohio University had the idea of a new type of catalyst capable of extracting hydrogen from urine.