Source: Good News Network
You’ve flushed something valuable down the toilet today.
This new study is the first to show that purple phototrophic bacteria – which can store energy from light – when supplied with an electric current can recover near to 100% of carbon from any type of organic waste, while generating hydrogen gas for electricity production.
Organic compounds in household sewage and industrial wastewater are a rich potential source of energy, bioplastics and even proteins for animal feed – but with no efficient extraction method, treatment plants discard them as contaminants.
Purple bacteria, however, is an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective solution.
RELATED: The Hoover Dam Could Soon Be Turned into a ‘Giant Battery’ for Renewable Energy
“One of the most important problems of current wastewater treatment plants is high carbon emissions,” says co-author Daniel Puyol of King Juan Carlos University, Spain. “Our light-based biorefinery process could provide a means to harvest green energy from wastewater, with zero carbon footprint.”
“Purple phototrophic bacteria belong to the biggest and most diverse group of bacteria,” Puyol told Research Gate. “All of them are photosynthetic, but unlike plants and algae, they use infrared light as the energy source for their metabolism. This gives them a color from brown to red—including purple.
“The main feature of these fascinating organisms is their versatile metabolism. They can perform a range of metabolic reactions, making them a kind of metabolic Swiss army knife. For this reason, these organisms are ubiquitous in nature.
However, their preferred environment is in bodies of water, mainly lakes. They’re also frequently found in wastewater treatment plants, which gives us a clue about their applications.”LOOK: Tiny Wind…
The post Special Bacteria is Found to be a ‘Battery’ That Turns Sewage Waste into Clean Hydrogen Energy appeared first on FeedBox.