A strong showing of agricultural innovation was displayed at the BT Young Scientist Awards on Monday 8 January. Secondary school students from across the country displayed a firm understanding of various themes including farm safety, technology and current environmental concerns.

The event was opened by scientist, Professor Brian Cox. An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar welcomed the innovators and visited various displays from the 500-strong exhibitors. Over the next week, 55,000 people are expected to pass through the RDS arena to visit the exhibition.

Agricultural projects

One impressive project came from Abbey Hehir, Rebecca Murphy and Ryley Cantrell from St John Bosco Community College in Co Clare. They developed a slurry pit safety warning system. This involves a laser-gate system that, if breached, an alarm will go off via a smartphone app and alert the phone carrier that something may have fallen into the pit.

The laser is operated by a solar panel system and includes a stationary button attached to the mechanism that could be manually pressed by anybody in a nearby vicinity. This would allow for a small child to activate the alarm should an adult fall into the pit.

Jesse Marsden and Fionan Donohoe, first-year students from St Mogue's College, Co Cavan, did an investigation into the impact of various manure on the power output of microbial fuel cells. Their findings showed that the manures caused a significant increase in power output in the microbial fuel cells (MFCs).

There was a 1,500% increase of MFC for goat manure, just under 2,000% increase for cow manure and a 2,500% increase in peak power output for horse manure.

"We see potential uses for this technology on a large scale in devices where either access to change a power supply is difficult or where a constant supply of power is needed", they said.

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