microbial fuel cells

A bad bottle can throw a wrench in your dinner party, but researchers in the U.S. and India say it could also lower your energy bills. Using the leftover vinegar and sugar in improperly fermented wine, those scientists are devising novel methods to turn wastewater from vineyards into electricity and hydrogen, cleaning the water in the process.

Desalinization technology has long been trapped between two competing nightmare scenarios. Without desalination, fresh water resources run out and large swaths of the earth suffer crippling water shortages. But if we desalinate on a large scale, we keep burning fossil fuels, the earth warms, the ice caps melt, and sea levels rise to wreak havoc on coastal regions.

Geobacter, a microbe that generates electricity when placed in mud and wastewater, has been evolved into a far more productive strain, as part of a new University of Massachusetts breakthrough that has researchers thinking of new fuel cell designs.

Science Daily says that Geobacter is about 3-5 nanometers in diameter, which is about 20,000 times finer than a human hair. Geobacter is known for its ability to transfer electrons, which enables it to "extract" energy from biomass.