Researchers at Penn State are developing a way to turn the water that you flush down your toilet into a fuel cell. At wastewater treatment plants bacteria feast on organic matter in the water breaking it down in the process. As the bacteria do there job electrons are released out into the air – and that is wasted energy.
What the researchers at Penn State have done is put the whole process into something that resembles a battery cell. When the bacteria are deprived of oxygen they instead release those electrons down a wire creating electricity.
So far they haven’t been able to create a cost effective way of doing this on a large scale, but if they can figure that out then our wastewater treatment plants will be producing energy for the grid instead of using it. It’s estimated that along with supplying enough energy for there own needs the treatment plants could power for about 80 homes.
One of the most exciting things about this is that you can use almost any type of wastewater as fuel. To me that sounds like we’re one step closer to the trash powered DeLorean we’ve always wanted.