What if sewage could be treated at a household level in an economically feasible and energy efficient way? It’s the challenge that Boston-based Cambrian Innovation has set itself and has begun field tests on at a plant called BioVolt in Maryland. Over 2000 litres of sewage can be converted into enough clean water each day for at last 15 people by the microbial fuel cell structure, while generating enough electricity to power itself and a little extra.
Conventional treatment plants consume huge amounts of energy, worth 3% of total demand in the USA. If Cambrian Innovation’s experiment is successful, it could plot a path to local waste water recycling that is as commonplace as putting a solar panels on roofs.
The potential of microbial fuel cells has been recognised for an extended period as an alternative to existing treatment plants that use bacteria to metabolise organic materials, but ultimately requires further chemical and energy treatment before ending up in landfill. However, scaling biochemistry that metabolises the contaminants and yields electricity to help power the process outside of the lab has been challenging.
BioVolt’s technique combines strains of microbes to process the sludge in a way that turns the whole set-up into a kind of battery producing self-powering electricity. Similar projects are underway in other parts of the U.S. and a future where different kinds of microbial fuel cells are utilised to treat different kinds of waste, while recovering useful by-products.
Scaling up to a point where it can process more than 20,000 litres per day is the next challenge for Cambrian Innovation, who hope to microbial fuel cells can be the solution for renewable water that parallels what solar and wind sources do for renewable energy.
Source: Bacteria made to turn sewage into clean water and electricity
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