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London Science Museum Exhibition (2011-2012)
Newcastle showcase ‘Bug Battery’ at London Science Museum
By: Dr. Emma Bowen
Posted on August 24, 2013 at 9:00 PM
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.
