Breakthrough in Electricity-Producing Microbe

University of Massachusetts researchers have made a breakthrough with "Geobacter," a microbe that produces electric current from mud and wastewater. A conservative estimate puts the energy output increase at eight times that of the original organism, potentially allowing applications far beyond that of extracting electricity from mud. "Now, planning can move forward to design microbial fuel cells that convert waste water and renewable biomass to electricity, treat a single home's waste while producing localized power (especially attractive in developing countries), power mobile electronics, vehicles and implanted medical devices, and drive bioremediation of contaminated environments."

Comments

Re:I, for one...

[JordanL]

You bring up a good point. This technology simply liberates the stored energy in feces, which is itself processed from the stored energy in plants.

I'm always amazed at how little variation there really is in energy production. Really there are only two sources of energy here on earth:

-Solar
-Nuclear

Even geothermal is powered by the heat of the earth's core, which is itself powered by radioactivity. (I guess one could argue that the radioactive elements were formed in a star, making them solar as well, but that's a bit too far for me.)

Re:I, for one...

[Hortensia Patel]

Tidal?