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They've got the power
Technology
ONE PER CENT
They’ve got the power Microbes can generate energy as they clean water, says Sally Adee
24 | NewScientist | 30 July 2016
bacteria to metabolise the organic set-up into a battery. This has the material in waste water. “There’s added benefit of slowing bacterial lots of food for them, so they growth, so that at the end of the reproduce fast,” says Cambrian process you have electricity and chief technology officer Justin no microbe cake. Buck. At the end of the process, A number of teams are working the microbes can make up a third on their own versions of these by weight of the leftovers to be cells. Orianna Bretschger at the disposed of. Before being put in J. Craig Venter Institute in San landfill, this “microbe cake” itself Diego, California, is testing hers needs to be heat-sterilised and at a farm run by the San Pasqual chemically treated, which uses High School in nearby Escondido, a lot of energy. using it to process about 630 litres Microbial fuel cells have long of pig waste per day. been touted as the way forward. The idea is that the biochemistry “The bacteria that purify the water also liberate involved in metabolising the contaminants can yield electricity electrons, turning the set‑up into a battery” to help power the process. But fuel cells of this kind have been very difficult to scale up outside Bretschger is in the early stages the lab. of building a larger pilot system, BioVolt uses strains of to be commissioned in Tijuana, Geobacter and another microbe Mexico, later this year. “I think called Shewanella oneidensis to that we will still be on track for process the sludge. Its proprietary commercialisation in the next mix of organisms has one key three to five years,” she says. advantage – the bacteria liberate Her system goes a step some electrons as they respire, beyond BioVolt and traditional effectively turning the whole plants in that it can rid water of pharmaceuticals – synthetic oestrogens, for example. Bretschger is now looking at ways to add pain relief drugs to the list. Cambrian CEO Matt Silver sees a future in which different kinds of microbial fuel cells treat different kinds of waste, perhaps recovering useful by-products. Another of the firm’s designs, EcoVolt, generates methane as it cleans up waste water produced by a Californian brewery. It has also cut the brewery’s energy use by 15 per cent and its water use by 40 per cent. Cambrian hopes BioVolt will scale up to processing more than 20,000 litres per day. Microbial fuel cells, Silver thinks, will do for renewable water what solar and –The usual way is a bit of a grind– wind did for renewable energy. n
Dead man’s fingers As requests go, it’s an odd one. Last month, police asked biometric researcher Anil Jain at Michigan State University to 3D-print copies of a dead man’s fingertips so they could access his fingerprint-locked phone. The police have scans of the man’s digits from a previous arrest. The replicas have been coated with metallic particles to make them work on a capacitive scanner, which relies on our skin’s conductivity.
3%
The boost to GDP that could result from a central bank issuing a digital currency like bitcoin, according to the Bank of England
Cybercrime on the rise Bank fraud, virus attacks, hacked email accounts. There were 5.8 million cybercrime incidents in England and Wales last year, affecting about one in 10 people, says the UK’s Office for National Statistics. Chris Greany of the City of London Police endorsed a call for a national campaign to make people more internet savvy, on a par with the UK’s seat-belt and drink-drive campaigns of the 1980s and 90s.
Picture Credit
Picture Credit
THEY’RE miraculous in their own way, even if they don’t quite turn water into wine. Personal water treatment plants could soon be recycling our waste water and producing energy on the side. Last month, Boston-based Cambrian Innovation began field tests of what’s known as a microbial fuel cell at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland. Called BioVolt, in one day it can convert 2250 litres of sewage into enough clean water for at least 15 people. Not only that, it generates the electricity to power itself – plus a bit left over. This is a big deal, as conventional treatment plants guzzle energy – typically consuming 1.5 kilowatt-hours for every kilogram of pollutants removed. In the US, this amounts to a whopping 3 per cent of the total energy demand. If the plants could be self-powered, recycling our own waste water could become as commonplace as putting a solar panel on a roof. Existing treatment plants use
ONE PER CENT
They’ve got the power Microbes can generate energy as they clean water, says Sally Adee
24 | NewScientist | 30 July 2016
bacteria to metabolise the organic set-up into a battery. This has the material in waste water. “There’s added benefit of slowing bacterial lots of food for them, so they growth, so that at the end of the reproduce fast,” says Cambrian process you have electricity and chief technology officer Justin no microbe cake. Buck. At the end of the process, A number of teams are working the microbes can make up a third on their own versions of these by weight of the leftovers to be cells. Orianna Bretschger at the disposed of. Before being put in J. Craig Venter Institute in San landfill, this “microbe cake” itself Diego, California, is testing hers needs to be heat-sterilised and at a farm run by the San Pasqual chemically treated, which uses High School in nearby Escondido, a lot of energy. using it to process about 630 litres Microbial fuel cells have long of pig waste per day. been touted as the way forward. The idea is that the biochemistry “The bacteria that purify the water also liberate involved in metabolising the contaminants can yield electricity electrons, turning the set‑up into a battery” to help power the process. But fuel cells of this kind have been very difficult to scale up outside Bretschger is in the early stages the lab. of building a larger pilot system, BioVolt uses strains of to be commissioned in Tijuana, Geobacter and another microbe Mexico, later this year. “I think called Shewanella oneidensis to that we will still be on track for process the sludge. Its proprietary commercialisation in the next mix of organisms has one key three to five years,” she says. advantage – the bacteria liberate Her system goes a step some electrons as they respire, beyond BioVolt and traditional effectively turning the whole plants in that it can rid water of pharmaceuticals – synthetic oestrogens, for example. Bretschger is now looking at ways to add pain relief drugs to the list. Cambrian CEO Matt Silver sees a future in which different kinds of microbial fuel cells treat different kinds of waste, perhaps recovering useful by-products. Another of the firm’s designs, EcoVolt, generates methane as it cleans up waste water produced by a Californian brewery. It has also cut the brewery’s energy use by 15 per cent and its water use by 40 per cent. Cambrian hopes BioVolt will scale up to processing more than 20,000 litres per day. Microbial fuel cells, Silver thinks, will do for renewable water what solar and –The usual way is a bit of a grind– wind did for renewable energy. n
Dead man’s fingers As requests go, it’s an odd one. Last month, police asked biometric researcher Anil Jain at Michigan State University to 3D-print copies of a dead man’s fingertips so they could access his fingerprint-locked phone. The police have scans of the man’s digits from a previous arrest. The replicas have been coated with metallic particles to make them work on a capacitive scanner, which relies on our skin’s conductivity.
3%
The boost to GDP that could result from a central bank issuing a digital currency like bitcoin, according to the Bank of England
Cybercrime on the rise Bank fraud, virus attacks, hacked email accounts. There were 5.8 million cybercrime incidents in England and Wales last year, affecting about one in 10 people, says the UK’s Office for National Statistics. Chris Greany of the City of London Police endorsed a call for a national campaign to make people more internet savvy, on a par with the UK’s seat-belt and drink-drive campaigns of the 1980s and 90s.
Picture Credit
Picture Credit
THEY’RE miraculous in their own way, even if they don’t quite turn water into wine. Personal water treatment plants could soon be recycling our waste water and producing energy on the side. Last month, Boston-based Cambrian Innovation began field tests of what’s known as a microbial fuel cell at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland. Called BioVolt, in one day it can convert 2250 litres of sewage into enough clean water for at least 15 people. Not only that, it generates the electricity to power itself – plus a bit left over. This is a big deal, as conventional treatment plants guzzle energy – typically consuming 1.5 kilowatt-hours for every kilogram of pollutants removed. In the US, this amounts to a whopping 3 per cent of the total energy demand. If the plants could be self-powered, recycling our own waste water could become as commonplace as putting a solar panel on a roof. Existing treatment plants use