Newcastle showcase ‘Bug Battery’ at London Science Museum
By: Dr. Emma Bowen

Dr Sharon Velasquez of CEGs has been asked by Professor Bruce Logan of Penn State University US, to assemble and commission a fuel cell of his design for the “Water Wars: fight the food crisis” exhibition at the London Science Museum ; an exhibition showing how engineers are developing technologies to secure enough water and prevent a global food crisis. The device: a simple electrical cell, about the size of an A4 text book, generates enough electrical current to power a small desk fan, providing a good visual demonstration of the sort of research that Newcastle’s Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) group are involved in.

As we enter Newcastle University’s Year of Sustainability, this particular ‘bug battery’ is especially exciting since it produces electricity by degrading wastewater and not the more conventional fuel cell compounds such as hydrogen and methanol which are expensive to produce or store. Dr Velasquez observes that the microbial fuel cell has been inoculated with wastewater collected from regional sewage plants and so reveals that the specialist bacteria required to produce electricity from waste are already present in our ordinary natural environments; and moreover, that these bacteria are potentially capable of releasing the energy stored in wastewater for direct use.

The invitation to exhibit Logan’s fuel cell at the Science Museum coincides with the centenary of the first published report on the electricity-producing capability of bacteria, by Professor M. C. Potter of Durham University, 1911. The MFC group at Newcastle, which includes members of two different schools: CEAM and CEGs; marked this occasion with a day of talks from international guests and collaborators from the SUPERGEN research group – a consortium of UK universities studying microbial fuel cells. Co-organiser Dr Jamie Hinks of CEGs noted that the North East could be proud of its history in energy innovation, since the Durham Professor’s original experiments were carried out in Newcastle University’s Armstrong Building, here in Newcastle, and that the general principals of his original microbial fuel cell are still used today.

With such longevity and simple elegance in the underlying process, it seems surprising that MFCs have not gone on to be better exploited during the intervening century, but as Dr Velasquez explains, the barrier to development of the technology has been a lack of profitability and motivation for commercialisation. The materials needed to make the electrodes for the cell for example, are expensive, exceeding the financial gains from the electrical output of the cell. However with the increasing drive for carbon-neutral wastewater treatment, the potential of MFCs to utilise the latent energy in wastewater is driving something of a renaissance in this technology. As we enter the Year of Sustainability, we hope the Penn State-Newcastle Bug Battery will not fail to impress at the London Science Museum or at the very least, that it keeps its audience cool.