Thursday 8 March 2012

Giving waste water the power to clean itself

www.nature.com
1 Mar 2012

A technique that combines two novel forms of renewable energy — one relying on bacteria and the other on salt water — generates more electricity than either one alone and cleans waste water at the same time. The work is published today in Science1.

Waste water contains a great deal of energy in the form of organic matter, says lead author Bruce Logan, director of the Hydrogen Energy Center and the Engineering Energy and Environment Institute at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Domestic waste water contains nine times more chemical energy than the energy required to treat it — that amount, added to the energy in waste water from livestock and food production, would be nearly enough energy to maintain the entire US water infrastructure, he says.

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1 comments:

Unknown said...

One thing that I really learned with my wastewater treatment certification is that even if we have technology and facilities like this to give us good water source is that we still need to take good care of it. We wouldn't want the future to have tons and tons of problems with this resource.