Engineers Devise Method To Turn Sewage Into Electricity

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Using naturally-occurring “wired microbes” as mini power plants, a team of engineers at Stanford University devised a method to generate electricity from sewage. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveal that these mini power plants produce electricity as they digest plant and animal waste.

The team, comprised of Yi Cui, a materials scientist, Craig Criddle, an environmental engineer, and Xing Xie, an interdisciplinary fellow, calls their new device a microbial battery and hope that it will be used in places such as sewage treatment plants.

The device could also be useful to break down organic pollutants in the “dead zones” of lakes and coastal waters where fertilizer runoff and other organic waste can deplete oxygen levels and suffocate marine life.

Their laboratory prototype at the moment, however, is the size of a D-cell battery. It looks like a chemistry experiment with two electrodes – negative and positive – plunged into a bottle of wastewater filled with an unusual type of bacteria. The bacteria attach to the negative electrode, and their feasting on organic waste particles creates electricity that is captured by the positive electrode.

“We call it fishing for electrons,” said Criddle, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering.

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