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Comments: 177 + - Science: Breakthrough in Electricity-Producing Microbe on Monday August 03 2009, @01:48PM
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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."
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I, for one... (Score:4, Funny)
...welcome our new shit-eating overlords?
Re:I, for one... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I, for one... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I, for one... (Score:4, Funny)
We're talking about a microbe that can turn bullshit into electricity?
Yep. Think about it: This site alone gives as much back as it takes. Sites like Infowars and Freep suddenly become self-sustaining generators. Fox News reduces its carbon footprint to near-zero levels!
Parent
Re:I, for one... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nuclear
Re:I, for one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tidal?
Parent
Some of my favorites... (Score:5, Funny)
- This story stinks!
- The OP is full of shit!
- I get shitty service on my phone now!
I'll show myself out.
Re:Some of my favorites... (Score:4, Funny)
Bah.
See, I knew we'd find a use for dark matter!
Parent
This is no joke! (Score:3, Interesting)
- Man electrocuted on toilet
- Tip for rainy weather: wear well-insulated boots when walking in mud
- Tomato fields plagued by ball lightning after manure fertilization
- In the 3rd world, muddy unpaved roads power electric scooters
The idea of dipping my iPhone into the nearest bucket of shit sickens me, and yet this may become the favored means of charging one's pho
Re:This is no joke! (Score:4, Informative)
I really hope you're kidding (I can't tell).
While I'm not an expert on the technology, I think I can pretty safely say that everything you said is a load of electrified crap.
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a microbe that produces electric current from mud? (Score:2)
Fantastic (Score:2)
Do I even need to go into What Could Possibly Go Wrong mode when discussing the prospects of using electricity-generating bacteria to power medical devices implanted in your body?
Re:Fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who helps to design and manufacture medical devices, I have no doubt that they could be made safely. That said, I doubt I'd be first in line to get one. I think even our current battery technology is sufficient for most implants. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to improve.
If the technology works out, I do look forward to a home septic system that produces power for me AND saves me from tearing up my yard. (Wishful thinking, yes, but cool nonetheless.)
Anyway, regardless of whether this technology becomes a commercial success, this kind of stuff could/will be very useful down the road. Great work.
Parent
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Protestor sign of the future: (Score:4, Funny)
"No blood for poop!"
This joke is 100% recycled via humor-digesting bacteria.
Parent
And in East Elbonia (Score:3, Funny)
And in East Elbonia, they are planning on dominating the world's energy market in 20 years....
. . . and I've been flushing away all that . . . (Score:2)
. . . um, . . . renewable energy resource all these years . . .
this reminds me (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe it's time to evaluate 2 girls 1 cup for educational reasons...
Then again maybe not
Needs a new power unit (Score:5, Funny)
Let's get serious (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, because no one could ever make any money selling a free-energy machine...
Why devlopping countries? (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't have enough shit over here? we don't need electricity over here?
Why can't we use that technology to make the water treatment plants produce electricity while they also treat our wastes?Â
Re: (Score:2)
over here people are full of shit, maybe we can make them useful, there are years and years worth of energy walking down the streets every day, running corporations and marketing.
I wouldnt trust these microbes with our water, i dont want to get zapped if they end up in my tap water!
Re: (Score:2)
Seems valid enough, though I wonder if the sheer amount of waste at a large plant would make this setup hard to manage. It might simply make more sense to have decentralized handling of waste, akin to small communities where each house has its own septic system.
If it could purify (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Great.. (Score:4, Funny)
soon we'll be purchasing dirt and instead of oil, declaring war against third world countries to steal their wastes, and those environmentalists are gonna whine about the smell.
New energy source!?! (Score:2, Funny)
Bring on the Matrix (Score:2)
Except machines will be using humans for ... well... you know which way to make electricity.
In-pod plumbing... it's gonna be big!
Details from the published paper (Score:3, Informative)
First, a citation to the published paper: Hana Yi, et al., Selection of a variant of Geobacter sulfurreducens with enhanced capacity for current production in microbial fuel cells, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Volume 24, Issue 12, 15 August 2009, Pages 3498-3503.
The extrapolated current density was 7.4 ± 0.1 A/m2. The individual fuel cells produced 14mA, which was sustained for 24 months.
Re:Details from the published paper (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
downside being (Score:4, Funny)
1. you get a tingly feeling every time you sit on the toilet, and its not from your feet falling asleep
2. if your septic tank overflows you're in danger of electrocuting the family dog
3. you also have to be careful where you piss, or you'll know what its like to urinate on the third rail of light rail system
Mr Fusion (Score:3, Funny)
Talk about the future.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Obligatory... (Score:4, Funny)
..."Dennis! There's some Lovely Filth down here!"...
The weekly Green Energy Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
We get at least one of these stories a week on /. A story about some wonderful new potential source of "Free" Green Energy. Of course none are anywhere near production and nobody sane even talks about them producing energy at costs per KWK anywhere near current technology. But as long as new miracle tech can be waved in front of folks the need to face up to our current reality can be postponed by wishful thinking.
Reality:
1. No "Alternate" Energy source is believed to be capable of producing a sizable fraction of our current energy needs at competitive rates in the next twenty years. Wind and solar are only popular in areas with massive government subsidy because they aren't cost effective on their own. And any attempt to scale either to carry large percentages of the grid will only make those issues clear and reveal more problems. Hydrogen is itself 'clean' but none of the sources are easy to tap in a clean way with one politically unacceptable (Nuke power) exception. Biofuels create egoboo for greens in small quantities but lead to famine when scaled up.
2. To obtain oil we are sending a large share of our wealth to people who are using it to destroy our civilization. This is a very bad idea.
3. The greens might have a point with the whole AGW thing. And even if their math and models are all wet it is likely we are having SOME effect somewhere with all this drilling, extracting and burning of fossil fuels.
4. Fusion has been thirty years off for the last forty years.
We really need to have a hard look at those realities, stop dreaming of a painless solution and start looking at options that might actually be able to help in the next twenty years.
Re:The weekly Green Energy Hype (Score:5, Insightful)
But then again, had
Within 10 years of that fictional
I totally agree that there's probably no way we're going to get any significant amount of our energy needs from electricity-producing microbes. Just as we probably won't from solar, wind, or waves alone. But it's just another piece of the puzzle for the future. Oil & coal aren't going away anytime soon, but it is important that we explore other options to push the frontier of what is possible. You never know, there's always a chance that this will be "the next big thing". It's worth at least reading about.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Photos (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, so fast. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Geobacter biofilm's "fortuitous" electron-transferring skill, the product of natural selection, suggested a pathway to Lovley - a way he might use selective pressure to increase its capacity to produce power. He and colleagues grew Geobacter as usual on a graphite electrode, providing acetate as food and allowing a colony to form the biologically active slime, or biofilm where electron transfer takes place across the nanowires. But for this new experiment they added a tiny, 400-millivolt "pushback" current in the electrode that forced Geobacter to press harder to get rid of its electrons.
The result of providing a more challenging environment, within five short months, Lovley notes, was evolution of a beefed-up microorganism that can press at least eight times more electric current across the electrode than the original strain. âoeI'm really happy with this outcome," the microbiologist notes. "It's exceptionally fast feedback to us and a very satisfying result." He adds, "I'm still a little amazed that they make electricity, but I'm happy to be exploring how to harness that ability. I'm sure there'll be applications developed in the future that we canâ(TM)t even envision right now."
That's halfway down in the article.
You should try reading things before you try to debunk them. The environment will be created to get the most electricity out of the little microbes, and probably sealed off and not thrown in the dirt. I imagine there may even be filters in place where the waste comes into make sure that any natural predators are weakened or killed to continue allowing the organisms to thrive.
And they have been studying this organism since 1987, and examining it for electrical production since 2002. I'm glad you're skeptical, but not glad that you're commenting on something you didn't even bother to read.
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Re: (Score:2)
I think mud is a euphemism for many of us. The riverbed, in this case, might be the bottom of sewage treatment plants. As for other bacteria, we could heat the "mud" up for a while to largely sterilize it to reduce that competition.
But it seems like this would (if it could operate in munch dryer situations) be an ideal additive to compost heaps to get a little more out of them...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm wondering what would happen to compost heaps after some time with this bacteria. Will they be still useful for growing plants with them, or will they become "de-energized"?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ooooh. Interesting question! It binds iron and other metals, so that might make them more digestible, or less. Truely unclear.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They would be de-energized. But the nutrients would remain. Nutrients are the building blocks needed by photosynthetic organisms to build carbohydrates (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc). So de-energized compost piles would still be good places for plants to grow.
Devon
Re:More efficient adaptation, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
... what's to stop the microbes from evolving/adapting BACK to the lower output when they're placed in a rich environment (fuel cell, whatever) again? Stupid researchers... they forget that mutation doesn't only occur when they want it to occur and not only in the fashion they desire.
[sarcasm]You're right. All this research is useless. We should just give up.[/sarcasm]
I feel like I say this constantly, but I just can't help myself here...
Just because you don't see a benefit doesn't mean there isn't one. Just because the technology doesn't instantly save humanity from all of its mistakes doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Even research that never directly leads to a useful commercial application is helpful. Tons of advances have come sideways out of unrelated research. (Also, knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a choice many scientists make and there's nothing wrong with it.)
If you can't see past your own life, please get away from mine.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More efficient adaptation, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
An electrode would really be the ideal living enviroment for this organism- it would act as a near-infinite sink for electrons. The mutant strain KN400 seems to be better adapted to living on an electrode, so within the constraints of a fuel-cell environment, the mutant strain should outcompete against the wild strain. In the organism's native enviroment, mud in a riverbed, I'd suspect the wild-type would be more successful, since it does not prefer to anchor itself in a biofilm. In mud, the organism would be better served on the move, making use of metal oxides as it finds them, rather than being tied to one spot and risking depletion (essentially asphyxiating).
However, in the fuel cell, selection pressure will favor organisms that stick to the electrodes, maximize electron conduction, and minimize internal resistance. Even without the "pushback" current used to drive adaptation of these characteristics, my guess is that the fitness advantages they provide will cause them to be passed on to future generations.
Parent
Re:Mostly Fact-free FA (Score:4, Informative)
Geobacter is an obligate anaerobe, so it does not require- indeed, cannot tolerate- access to the atmosphere, and it is not photosynthetic. You can buy carbon black, which makes a fine electrode, with a surface area to volume ratio of greater than 50 square meters per cubic centimeter. In the described experiment, they grew the bacterium on graphite, so carbon black should not pose an obstacle. A cubic meter of carbon black would have a surface area of about 50 square kilometers, but a mass of about 2 tons. An output of 3.9W/m^2 over 50 million square meters is 195 megawatts, which isn't shabby considering your input would be wastewater. Now, of course, that number is a wildly optimistic figure- good luck covering that much surface area with a bacterial biofilm- but it does suggest that you could produce enough power to say, make a wastewater treatment facility self-sufficient.
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