Could our waste be part of the answer to humanity’s energy
problems? Some researchers think so, thanks to bacteria that chow down on
everything from sewage to heavy metals and give off electricity as one of their
own waste products.
But as with many great ideas, the devil is in the details.
OIST’s Biological Systems Unit is one of the research groups now working on
making waste-fueled microbial fuel cells (MFCs) cheap and efficient enough for
real-world applications.