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Bacteria As Fuel Cells?
KantIsDead writes "MIT's Tech Review is running an interview with Boston University Bioengineer Tim Gardner about the possibility of using bacteria to produce electricity. If fuel cells running off sugar are nearly here, alcohol-powered robots cannot be far." From the article: "While typical fuel cells use hydrogen as fuel, separating out electrons to create electricity, bacteria can use a wide variety of nutrients as fuel. Some species, such as Shewanella oneidensis and Rhodoferax ferrireducens, turn these nutrients directly into electrons. Indeed, scientists have already created experimental microbial fuel cells that can run off glucose and sewage. Although these microscopic organisms are remarkably efficient at producing energy, they don't make enough of it for practical applications."
Have they tried feeding them Taco Bell?
My dreams of having a bender robot as a friend may soon come true.
Alcohol powered robots can bite my shiny metal ass!
I like my beverages with warning labels!
Couldn't this be considered somehow as animal cruelty?
No Sigs!
How exactly do you take full atomic structures and "turn these nutrients directly into electrons"? Even if you were able to release the electrons from the atoms the whole material remains, neutrally charged does it not?
Porn for Nerds. Stuff that matters
I am more impressed with that Montreal kid who did something similiar:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70882-0.ht
Kartik Madiraju, an 11th-grader from Montreal, was able to generate about half the voltage of a normal AA battery with a fifth of an ounce of naturally occurring magnetic bacteria. And the bacteria kept pumping current for 48 hours nonstop.
"alcohol-powered"
"glucose and sewage"
The future will be full of cars that only exaust water....and fueling stations brimming with switch-grass, corn-mash, stale beer, human feces, and the occasional Rhodoferax ferrireducens bateria. And I thought horses smelled bad....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Ok, assume that in 3 years we find just the right bacteria we need, and can have big
enough colonies of them to be useful. How do we stop them from just mutating into
non-viable types of their former selves and corrupting the colony? Sure they would
reproduce asexually and that would limit mutations compared to our dirty process
with gametes and zygotes, but that small rate of mutation will definitely be amplified
by the apparent fact that we'll need trillions of these bacteria to do anything large-scale.
IAABM (I am a biology major)
I invented this concept years ago. Step 1: Get my feet really worked up and sweaty while trapped in a tight shoe -- this spurs bacterial growth Step 2: Take off shoe and attack roommate with it -- roommate runs away from the stink, but he is roped onto a treadmill Step 3: The kinetic energy from the treadmill's movement is converted into electrical energy. I've just been working on creating a pocket sized roommate/treadmill, I was pretty darn close too.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
1) What if the bacteria escape from the implant and spread through my body?
2) Could an antibiotic cure for an unrelated infection kill my artificial heart?
Neither can power plugs that you can directly plug into your ass after ingesting healthy amounts of symbiotic bacteria.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
It is only a short time before Bender Bending Rodriguez is made in some Mexican factory.
(I am Bender. Please insert beer.)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yes.
see also:
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/5/23/3693
bacteria + rotting biomass has long been able to produce energy.
I can see this is new because it produces hydrogen as opposed to other gasses, but is a hydrogen economy that much better than a methane economy if it is based on biomass?
Maybe in 50 years time?
Ok I'll mod myself Troll now...
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
If you provide an constant, optimum climate for your strain, however, there wouldn't be a great deal of evolutionary pressure forcing them to mutate into non-viable types.
I'm not sure this is a good assumption. If the bacteria were a product of genetic engineering and not selective breeding in that environment, they might be easily overwhelmed by a mutant strain that was more suited to the environment, but less useful to us. For example, we might engineer bacteria that produce electricity, but do it at the expense of reproduction rate. If a mutant strain appeared that didn't have that characteristic (i.e. if it didn't produce as much electricity but reproduced faster) then it would probably overtake the preferred/engineered strain.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It would be unlikely for the bacteria to spontaneously mutate out 2 genes at once, thereby subverting our design. Obviously bacteria, number in the billions, so it will be necessary to restock our fuel cell occasionally. Of course you could be clever and tie in a third gene that gives immunity to a toxic substance, so that non-desired mutated bacteria are killed off automatically.
..........FULL STOP.
"Have they tried feeding them Taco Bell?"
It would be cannibalism! Taco Bell's meat is already a lower grade than dog food, and full of bugs (cockroach eggs, anyone?)
I'm back, baby ! My friends and I were just in this bar, right around the corner !
-- Bender
"...fuel cells that can run off glucose and sewage. Although these microscopic organisms are remarkably efficient at producing energy..."
any fore-seeable problems with waste? i'm sure not *all* of the fueling material will be transformed...there oughta be some nasty by-product...
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
No one tell the computers, or they won't have any reason to keep us alive after they take over.
Plus the bacteria won't need an elaborate VR to keep them occupied while generating electricity.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Have more than one tank, evaluate the takes for stability, power production, and any other facters you like. Then kill off the problem tanks and restart them with the best tanks. Over time things will just keep getting better.
well, it might not be efficient for fuel cells, but you have to admit, using them to clean out clogged toilets could be a shocking experience, and maybe we could make glow-bulbs that float in raw sewage so it would be prettier ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... full of bugs (cockroach eggs, anyone?)
Oh, come on.
We all know that cockroach eggs are no more "cockroaches" than human fetuses are "human beings".
Duh.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
There's something wrong with this sentence. It sounds like they're saying that the bacteria perform an efficient conversion of the sugar energy into electrical energy, but that the problem is that bacteria can't be scaled effectively to produce significant amounts of power.
There's a problem with the idea that bacteria don't scale. Bacteria are well known for their exponential growth curves. Give me a sufficently large petri dish with medium and a starter batch of bacteria, and I'll solve your scaling dilemma.
If they are truly efficient, then there's no problem with bacteria not making enough power, as making more bacteria is trivial. However, I don't think it's likely they really are efficient. It seems highly unlikely bacteria would waste much energy on producing unused electricity, one might expect them, like most living things, to use most of their available energy growing, respirating, reproducing, and anything else that generally falls under the category of "surviving." Sure enough, later in the article comes:
Gardner's team aims to harness the genetic control system to engineer bacteria that can produce energy more efficiently.
Which makes me think that the problem with the current bacteria is efficiency, not scalability, as the first sentence implies. Perhaps by "efficient" he means that they don't produce a lot of waste heat or something, but for generating electricity, the definition of efficiency should be what percent of the energy they take in they put back out as electricity.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Sounds like Matrix to me
False.
The world has found a use for politicians...
What practical household use can a robot that consumes alcohol possibly have?
I want a robot to get *me* a beer - if I have to give it one to get that to happen, it's no better than my loser friends.
I went to college. I've seen them. They're called rugby players.
Now you'll be asking people to piss in your gas tank!
"...alcohol-powered robots cannot be far."
Some of them work in the cubicle next to mine...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
How about using this idea to replace the coal-fired power plant that dot the US? Here's a novel idea...let's take those sewage treatment facilities, introduce some bio-engineered bacteria that loves to do nothing but fix electrons and reproduce, seal them into this fixed environment and feed them on sewage and sugar (much like brewers do with yeast) and sit back and watch them generate electricity back onto the grid. And just like a brewery, flush the environment and reintroduce fresh components (bacteria, sugar, sewage) to reduce the chance of an unwanted bacterial population from sneaking in. And to make things even more interesting...we all know that sewage is just rife with bacteria already...well, to reduce the chance of unwanted bacteria populations even further, gather up some of that nuclear waste we have hanging around and use it to irradiate the raw sewage before introducing it to our "good" bacteria...Viola! Raw sewage sterilized by radioactive waste! So, we have put radioactive waste, sewage, and bacteria to work, and out of this we get electricity and treated sewage (as well as solid waste that can be used as fertilizer for things like tree farms, landscaping, etc). Seems like a win-win situation to me.
Geez, is it that humans are the only thing that shouldn't produce electricity to benefit? Walking, using a bicycle-generator, bio-energy from humans could be useful... Then again, being overweight sounds a lot more productive.
A lot of good microbial fuel cell work, including the discovery of the geobacter genus, has been done by D.R. Lovley and the group at UMass/Amherst.
In addition to their work on the microbial fuel cells themselves, they've also made the interesting discovery that the bacteria naturally form nanowires to transfer electrons outside the cell--something potentially [sorry!] useful to connect to an external electrode.
Shit... I've been running on a pure alcohol diet for 20 years! There's nothing new here.
What exactly are they going to do when these genetically engineered batteries end up in a landfill and start metabolizing trash? Are landfills the new electric plant or is this going to suck bigtime when these things run rampant. Introducing non-native lifeforms really has to be thought out a lot better than I've seen in the past. Think Australia, but globally.
Septic tanks starting house fires. Garbage trucks that zap passers by. People infected by batteries. Cats and dogs living together, all the worst parts of the bible.
Bacteria.... Hell, in my neck of town we just use water!
Water Fuel Cell
This sound like the plot of a horror sci-fi movie.
Scientists genetically engineer bacteria so they can produce electricity from carbon on a grand scale. What could possibly go wrong when they escape and start mutating?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
How about a definitive No,
bacteria are not animals. They make up a different kingdom.
put THAT in your fuel cell and smoke it.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
I didn't use a close-html commane "/a", and still the Slashdot Code split the string enough to cause a maligned URL.
9 4168790800&q=Water+Car+Inventor
Here is the correct and complete URL http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-33339921
without prejudice
Escherichia Coli are humble, trustworthy bacteria that eat my shit and make somthing of it.
A corporate-Politician today; they'd eat so-much shit long enough just to die after the moment to see where it was coming from.
without prejudice
I can post a URL too: White Castle!
One hamburgher to rule them, one mole of transfatty acid to bind them, and one teaspon of secret sauce to make their stomach churn!
PS: Would you believe that smelly restaurant is accepting "comments" at their phone number "1800THECRAVE"? (heh)
without prejudice
Jeremy Logan's Website.
(Later on, Elijah gave up trying to convince his robotic pal)
Some species, such as Shewanella oneidensis
Hey I think I went to highschool with her.
Support the FairTax
This is modern-age slavery! Why must we discriminate against these lower life forms? How would you like it if you were used for fuel?
Hello world!
I'm just glad that someone found a use for Coke Blak.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm not so sure about bacteria not growing in a landfill. If you look around any dump that has part of it bulldozed over, you will see pipes coming out of the ground - these release the insane amount of methane produced by the rotting waste. Rot means biological consumption, ergo bacteria. There's enough methane in even a small landfill coming out on a routine basis to power a good-sized generator, so some sort of microbial lifeform most definitely thrives in that environment.
The power generation via landfill thing is actually kind of cool though. A while back I designed a system for a company that could allow for realtime monitoring and control of this plant, which used a modified CAT Diesel generator which ran 24x7 solely on the methane produced by this dump, I think in the range of 800kW-1MW depending on output and load. They had a big flare that burned off whatever else they couldn't use in the engine at the time. Stuff like that I think will be a big part of our energy future, simply because as we consume more and more, we create massive amounts of waste. Anything that can be done to either recycle that waste or benefit from its natural cycle of degradation will go far.
You don't have to actively kill them. Just stop feeding them. Make the food supply for each cell of the grid dependant on that grid's power output. If they stop generating, they die of starvation. That'll teach 'em.
In fact it should even teach them to produce electricity as efficently as possible. Thus making them better over time, instead of worse.
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
Then some of us become more fervent in our religious beliefs, and the Alterans...believe in science. (Bonus points for anyone who can name the Alteran who said that)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
As long as PETM throws a few of those nude-protest things in my city, it'll be worth it.