ST. LOUIS, Aug 8, 2006 -- UPI

 

U.S. researchers say they are working on creating a microbial fuel cell that generates electricity from wastewater.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis say advances in the design of fuel cells during the last year have increased the power output by a factor of 10 and future designs, already in the minds of the researchers, might multiply that power output by 10 times again.

If that goal can be achieved, such a fuel cell could be used in the food and agricultural industries to generate electrical power -- all with the wastewater that today literally goes down the drain.

Assistant Chemical Engineering Professor Lars Angenent has devised a continually fed upflow microbial fuel cell, or UMFC. Angenent says wastewater enters from the bottom of the system and is continuously pumped up through a cylinder filled with granules of activated carbon.

Many previous microbial experiments used closed systems, but because such a system is continuously fed from a fresh supply of wastewater, Angenent says his UMFC has more applications for industry since wastewater is continually outputted during industrial production.

The research appears in the online edition of the journal Environmental Science Technology.

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