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OSU's Microbial Fuel Cell Could Make Waste Treatment an Energy Source

Posted by timothy on from the silent-but-powerful dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A team of engineers from Oregon State University has developed a breakthrough microbial fuel cell that is capable of generating 10 to 50 times more electricity from waste than other MFCs. The team hopes that their innovation will enable waste treatment plants to not only power themselves, but also sell excess electricity back to the grid. 'If this technology works on a commercial-scale the way we believe it will, the treatment of wastewater could be a huge energy producer, not a huge energy cost,' said associate professor Hong Liu. 'This could have an impact around the world, save a great deal of money, provide better water treatment and promote energy sustainability.'"

6 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Good news for the enviornment! by SternisheFan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This would greatly help out the enviornment worldwide by making waste treatment profitable, while also removing the tax burden. Here in Nassau County, N.Y., the waste treatment plants have been mis-managed for seemingly forever. The plants break down regularly causing untreated waste to be released into the already fragile eco-system. The once thriving clamming industry has been reduced to.near non-existant here on Long Island. The blame lies squarely on the untreated sewage released into the bays.

    1. Re:Good news for the enviornment! by Cenan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah I'm not sure we actually want "profitable" slabbed on something as important as waste treatment. That word is commonly followed by words like "margin" and leads to all sorts of nasty shortcuts that are just barely inside the often arbitrary law requirements.

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    2. Re:Good news for the enviornment! by fufufang · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah I'm not sure we actually want "profitable" slabbed on something as important as waste treatment. That word is commonly followed by words like "margin" and leads to all sorts of nasty shortcuts that are just barely inside the often arbitrary law requirements.

      In developing countries such as China, economic development has higher priority over the environment. If protecting the environment is profitable, private businesses would do it. So I would say this is a step forward helping countries like China.

    3. Re:Good news for the enviornment! by SpzToid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The city of Amsterdam imports trash (for profit) from all over the place to generate electricity. Amsterdam is enlarging its harbor infrastructure to increase the amount of trash barges that are hoped to arrive from other countries as those countries seek to reduce waste & emmissions. Currently the CO2 from the trucks arriving at the facility is considered more wasteful than future barges.

      The most-coveted data center locations surround this facility btw.

      http://www.aebamsterdam.com/en/home

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  2. Re:Or ... by Cenan · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA:

    The system also works better than an alternative approach to creating electricity from wastewater, based on anaerobic digestion that produces methane. It treats the wastewater more effectively, and doesn’t have any of the environmental drawbacks of that technology, such as production of unwanted hydrogen sulfide or possible release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

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  3. As usual, all press release and no paper by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do these things never have a link to a peer-reviewed paper that I can read to see what they're actually doing?

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