Best wishes,
Lowell
* * *
Bug Juice: Watts from Waste?
Charles W. Petit
USN&WR, 9/15/2003, p. 49
Hardworking microbes might power your laptop some day, or maybe even your lawn mower. A recently discovered strain of bacteria efficiently makes electricity while turning sugars in plant waste and other garbage into water and carbon dioxide. The microbe grows in the mud under a Virginia bay, but scientists reported this week that it also lives happily in an experimental fuel cell, dumping electrons into its wiring with 80-plus percent efficiency.
Electricity is part of the currency of living cells, which routinely
shuttle electrons about while getting energy from sugars. But other
biology-based systems tested in fuel cells demand additional, efficiency-sapping
steps to get the electrons to the circuitry. Microbiologist Derek
Lovley of the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, one of the microbe's
discoverers and coauthor of the new report in Nature Biotechnology,
says he's not sure the bacteria could deliver the oomph needed for, say,
cars. But a garbage-stoked fuel cell might run electronic devices
in areas away from power lines. Imagine wiring and inoculating your
compost pile, he says. "It would trickle-charge your electric mower
for next weekend, in time to make more grass clippings."
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