Expat kids want to use discarded batteries to power Pakistan villages

A 10-year-old Pakistani student's science project has demonstrated how remote villages in her home country can be powered by using discarded car and laptop batteries.
Ansa Sultan and her teammate, Shaayaan Pervaiz, were two among the many students who displayed their projects at a science exhibition organised at the Pakistan Association Dubai on Saturday.
"There are many villages in Pakistan that are without electricity and this is a way of solving that problem," said Sultan, who goes to the Pakistan Community Welfare School in Mussafah. "There are many batteries around the world, especially lithium-ion ones, that are wasted. They can be used to give electricity to these villages.
"Not having electricity in villages is a big problem in Pakistan and we have the answer in front of us."
UAE astronaut Hazzaa AlMansoori's space mission seemed to have inspired many youngsters, with several projects focusing on space exploration and how humans can live on Mars.
Ayesha Iftikhar and her teammate, who are grade 8 students at the Pakistan Community Welfare School, said using more methane-fuelled rockets can increase the number of trips to Mars. "We have designed our project around the most fundamental question: Is there any other form of life out there? Our universe is massive and there needs to be proper research carried out to find the answer to this question. We are also presenting a robot that can travel around Mars to assess its climate conditions and atmosphere."
Students of The City School Dubai showcased how humans can build a civilisation on the red planet. Ahmed Hani, a grade 10 student, and his peers said they wanted to explore how humans can settle on another planet by 2025.
"There are three main challenges we currently face: Water, food and oxygen. For water, we have created the idea of a device called 'waiver', which uses the 100 per cent humid conditions on Mars to condense it into water, which then gets collected in a tank," Hani said. "We'll take dry food from earth. We also have a setup where carbon dioxide can be converted into oxygen."
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com