Emefcy is building a demonstration plant in Israel that will scale up to 16 modules starting next year, and, in the lab, the company is already testing wastewater from factories across the globe. Emefcy hopes the scalable system will be available commercially some time in 2013, with a price tag of $4,000 to $5,000 per module.
Although Emefcy has garnered a lot of attention for its progress, the microbial fuel cell industry as a whole is still trying to prove whether this will really work, says Zhen He, a microbial fuel cell researcher at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee's Environmental Biotechnology and Bioenergy Lab. He notes that of the nearly 4,000 papers published on microbial fuel cells, less than 2 percent report on processing volumes of water larger than one liter. "I don't think one group can deal with everything." he says. "We need the whole field to move this to a larger scale." But Emefcy is not alone. There are some other groups, including a team at the J. Craig Venter Institute, that are scaling pilots of a microbial fuel cell for wastewater treatment.
While Emefcy tries to cut down on sludge, other researchers look for ways to turn sludge into biofuels, such as BlackGold Biofuels in Philadelphia. Another start-up, Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies in Vancouver, is harvesting minerals that would usually end up in sludge and turning them into high-grade fertilizer. Anaerobic digestion is also a growing trend in the industrial wastewater industry, according to the GWI report. Other companies, like FuelCell Energy in Danbury, Conn., are capturing the gas from anaerobic digesters to be used in combined heat and power plants.
About 104 municipal treatment plants use anaerobic digestion gas capture for a combined heat and cycle plant, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Municipalities are also taking advantage of the falling price of solar power to offset the energy needs of wastewater plants.
Other companies are looking to harness the flow of wastewater facilities to capture at least some of the hydropower as electricity. Hydrogen is another attractive by-product of wastewater, and some of Logan's research at Penn State involves looking into how to capture hydrogen to run fuel cells.
"I think there's still some uncertainty with whether the benefit is to make electrical power or to have a hydrogen production facility," Logan says. "Right now, it's a toss-up."
Depending on the location and type of wastewater, there will likely be a market opportunity for many different solutions. "We're changing the economics of wastewater," Cohen says. "It's a tremendous source of energy."
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Add CommentSounds interesting, but looks like its in its infancy. I hope the Israel demonstration pans out. I just have to wonder about a cubic meter to process 3 cubic meters per module per day. A cubic meter has approx 264 gallons or a module could process about 800 gallons a day. If you needed to process 100m gallons a day then you would need 125k of these modules and they don't even work on normal waste water according to the article...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccording to my reference, source one watt is the rate at which work is done when one ampere (A) of current flows through an electrical potential difference of one volt (V). Equating 4 watts which I understand to be a rate of electricity being produced with a kilogram of mass of waste appears to be an erroneous use of the term. It would appear to me as a non-scientist that a kilogram of waste should be equated to a rate of watts for a period, possibly a watt-hour.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the process produces carbon dioxide which is now classified as an environmental hazard (even though each exhale of our breath is carbon dioxide). Will this technology be prohibited in progressive states (countries)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs accorded Wikipedia, in 2015AD the world will deplete its petroleum crude oil below consumption levels. We need every scientist to look at their general and specific studies and see how to make energy from things that explode and buildups of electrons, for example. How could your study make energy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find this very interesting to rethink of a way to reduce the sludge by 80%. That's impressive in my book we do need to reduce the waste into the environment. Let's work together on improvement for all humans living on the earth. The energy produced is secondary to the whole problem of waste. Reinvent the old process is what is being done here not electricity. Blessing to You Israel !!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMuch of sewage sludge originates with food, from kitchen sinks and toilets, which absorbed CO2 when it was grown, so it is net neutral. Bacteria have been breaking down biological wastes since forever. Treatment plants just do it in a concentrated location resulting from the concentration of humans in cities. Using cleaned up sludge as fertilizer completes the cycle for the next round of food growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat would help is if people didn't put things down the drain that contaminate the sewage. One way to do that is separated "grey" and "black" water systems. Black is for organic wastes and grey is for clothes washing and utility sinks, where chemicals end up in the water. A few homes have dual systems, but I am not aware of any cities that do that on a large scale.
We wouldn't need sewage treatment if we used composting toilets and wetlands to clean water.Old style washmachines should be banned.most of the laundry can be cleaned by hanging the clothes on a clothsline;dry.The sun will freshen and kill bugs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@stan e m - You must have no sense of smell. What do you do in bad weather (aside from smelling bad)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@kenwa2010 - I just looked this up on Wikipedia and they give a range from 2009 to 2020 with the major caveat that alternate energy sources delay the point an unknown amount. In other words you are over simplifying.
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