Bugpower, the energy of the future

[bigtree]

This sci-fi scenario may lie in the not-too-distant future, thanks to a pair of US-based scientists who say they have invented the world's first efficient "bacterial battery."

Microbial fuel cells are not new, but until now they have run into big problems of cost and energy efficieny. Typically, they yield efficiency of "10 percent or less," which makes them big and unwieldy relative to the power they provide, Lovley said. The best effort has had an efficiency performance of about 50 percent.
But this was only achieved thanks to chemicals called mediators which sneak across the cell's membranes, pick up the free electrons and ferry them to the anode.

In a Pentagon-backed project, University of Massachusetts researchers Swades Chaudhuri, an Indian, and Derek Lovley, an American, say the battery's source is an underground bacterium that gobbles up sugar and converts its energy into electricity. Their prototype device ran flawlessly without refuelling for up to 25 days and is cheap and stable.

For people living in poor, remote communities, it should be possible to adapt the electrodes so that they used carbohydrate waste from farm animals or sewage to power batteries for running fridges and stoves. The US Department of Defense was interested in it for powering underwater microphones and sonar to spot passing ships and submarines.

Not the silver bullet we're looking for, but interesting nonetheless. Its energy efficiency is 83 percent. Good, good...

Hey,are microbes a renewable source?

[silverweb]

1. Very interesting!

Got a link?

[bigtree]

2. dumb me

http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030907190037.wzecn6ri.html

[treepig]

3. i just posted this information over in another thread

but it might be more relevant here (and sorry in advance for the double posting for anyone who's troubled by such displays of deviant behavior). anyhow,

it may be possible to also make natural gas from bacteria:

http://www.cea.fr/gb/publications/Clefs44/an-clefs44/clefs4416a.html

The second way is methanization, carried out by anaerobic fermentation, that is, decomposition through bacterial action in the absence of air, very damp substances such as algae, animal excrement or household waste. It is thus possible to obtain a gaseous mixture of methane (50 to 60%) and carbon dioxide (35 to 40%), making its use complicated and limited to in situ combustion for the production of heat and electricity

and hydrogen

http://www.cea.fr/gb/publications/Clefs44/an-clefs44/clefs4420a.html

(but to make this process efficient, the bacteria will need to be genetically engineered, and readers of this board are well aware of the evils of genetically-modified organisms, so that's a no-go).

by the way, if you click on the 'back to contents' link at the upper left of either of the above-cited links, you can find a nice summary of the energy technologies of tomorrow (for france, at least).

[FDR2004]

4. battery technology has lagged 100 years

It's what's holding up cell phone and digital camera technology. Amazing things can happen if we can devise more efficient and smaller batteries.

FDR2004

[Vogon_Glory]

5. Microbal Fuel Cells Not Zero Pollution But A Good Start

I have read reports concerning similar fuel cells that use microbes that "breathe" iron. The microbes in question normally live in very extreme enviornments like deep ocean volcanic vents at least a couple of thousand feet under the ocean's surface. Such a fuel cell would be "fueled" by some sort of hydrocarbon like sugar. That would certainly be a boon to oil-poor tropical countries hit hard by the bottoming-out of the sugar market, as well as beet farmers in North America and Europe undergoing similar stress.

Growing your own fuel, forsooth. And more efficient fuel than the tropical hardwoods cut down so many, many decades ago when the tropical forests were cut down for plantation-like exploitation.

Such production wouldn't quite be pollution-free. There would still be a need for something to power the machinery that tills the fields and powers the sugar mills and hauls the goods to market. There might also be a need for fertilizer. But I like to think that it would be a bit less polluting than all-petroleum systems currently in use. It's a start.