Teenage Genius Discovers Method To Turn Waste Water into Electricity

A high school student from Canada has discovered an ingenious way of converting waste water into electricity. 

Austin Wang from Vancouver says he has solved the problem with what to do with the one billion litres of waste water that gets flushed down toilets and sinks every day.

Cbc.ca reports:

Austin Wang, who’s won numerous science awards, came up with a way to genetically modify micro-organisms so that they could clean the waste water and generate electricity at the same time.

“Canadians are extremely wasteful,” says the 18-year-old who loves to play basketball and the piano. “On average, we’re worse than Americans.”

His method could possibly generate up to 600 gigawatts of energy from waste biomass.

“If we get efficiencies high enough, it’s theoretically achievable,” says Wang.

An average household in the province uses around 900 kilowatt-hours per month, estimates BC Hydro.