What does a young 17-year-old Faroese maid in a small village in the Faroe Islands in 1916 have to do with a revolutionary new urine-based cleaning fluid for diesel engines?
By Elin Brimheim Heinesen in Berlingske Tidende, Section 4, Sunday, 16 December 2001
Image: Lisa Jacobsen, drawn in 1975 in a typical pose in her living room by Faroese artist Fridtjof Joensen.
On 28 September, 2001, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, New Scientist, reported that researchers from the Dutch national laboratory TNO had discovered that urine can reduce pollution in diesel engines by up to 80 percent.
This is good news for the environment, and especially for haulage companies in the EU, which were otherwise facing a significant environmental tax from 2005 if the problem of highly polluting lorry engines was not resolved by then.
However, it is hardly advisable for lorry drivers to start urinating into their engines. Nor would the trucks’ toilet tanks be sufficient to meet the demand. Therefore, Dutch researchers, in collaboration with an American catalyst manufacturer and the truck manufacturer DAF, have developed a catalyst for diesel engines and extracted a body fluid component to inject into the catalyst instead of the real thing. The urine-based chemical is being trialled for production by the oil company Elf, which is also exploring the possibility of selling it at petrol stations.
Urine as a Detergent
It turns out the news about urine’s beneficial cleaning effect on engines isn’t so novel after all. In spring 2001, almost six months before the story broke in “New Scientist,” the Faroese fishing magazine, “FF-blaðið,” featured an interview with the veteran Faroese boat builder, Símun Johan Wolles.
He recalls the challenges faced by Faroese fishermen during World War I:
Due to the war, there was a shortage of diesel oil for the fishermen’s boats. But sailors are rarely at a loss. The Faroese fishermen began using whale blubber oil as fuel instead.
This resource was more readily available to them. The downside was that the blubber oil produced so much soot on the spark plugs that they became encrusted constantly.
This meant that every time one needed to start an engine, it had to be dismantled and cleaned first, which was an incredibly cumbersome and filthy task.
Boat builder Símun Johan Wolles recounts the tale of the clever 17-year-old maid, Lisa Toftegaard (later Jacobsen), who worked in the same household in the Faroese village of Leirvik as his own mother, Elsebeth Samuelsen.
One day in 1916, when the mechanic Andrias Andreasen came home, covered in soot from head to toe after cleaning the engine in his boat, Lisa suggested that it might be possible to use urine to clean the engine.
At that time, urine was used as a cleaning agent. It was stored in barrels and used for washing wool, hair, and general household cleaning. The more acidic, the better. Andrias Andreasen then had an idea that would prove to be very useful.
He decided to inject a little urine into the engine just before stopping it. Sure enough, when he checked the spark plugs, they were shiny and clean as freshly fallen snow. And Andrias had no trouble starting the engine again.
The news quickly spread among the fishermen, who could now avoid the messy job of dismantling engines to clean them.
Andrias Andreasen and the other fishermen happily used the effective urine-cleaning method for the remainder of the war years.
85 years later
Housemaid Lisa Jacobsen from Leirvik discovered the use of urine to clean engines 85 years ago. Lisa Jacobsen, born Toftegaard, was a remarkable woman. She was born on 6th June 1899 in the village Fuglafjørður in the Faroe Islands and died on 25th September 1992, aged 93, in Klaksvik.
Lisa didn’t have an easy start in life. At just one month old, she lost her mother and was placed in foster care. Her foster mother died when Lisa was only six, and she was then taken in by her foster mother’s eldest daughter, Olevina, who lived in Leirvik. Olevina treated Lisa as her own.
At 20, Lisa was betrothed to fisherman Eliseus Jacobsen from Syðradal. However, due to a sudden and severe bout of tuberculosis, they couldn’t marry until 1927, once she had recovered. They had no children of their own but took in two foster children, a boy and a girl, from Lisa’s younger foster sisters. The girl was my mother, Maud Heinesen.
Lisa Jacobsen was an exceptional storyteller. Her narrative skills captivated her audience, and in time she became known beyond her immediate circle. The Faroese radio aired several programmes featuring Lisa. She was a rich source of unique Faroese idioms and sayings, which were recorded by her daughter, Maud, and handed over to the Faroese University for preservation.
Lisa also possessed a phenomenal memory. Many sought her out for her knowledge of family genealogies, as she could recount many families’ ancestries back to the 1800s, naming each member.
The ingenious idea of cleaning engines with urine, which Lisa conceived at 17, went unrecognised in her lifetime. After the First World War, as fishermen received cleaner oil for their engines, the idea was gradually forgotten. Now, 85 years later, it has received scientific validation with an article in “New Scientist.”
However, it is not Lisa but some Dutch researchers who have been credited with the idea and will likely profit from it!
