Environmental concerns in Third World countries are very important to the health and welfare of the human beings that live there. Let's take for instance in Indonesia where the Tsunami destroyed villages and homes and washed debris, animal wastes, sewage and pollution into drinking water supplies, rivers, reservoirs and wells. In places like this it is important that they have some sort of way to treat sewage water and wastewater. But there are no sewer treatment plants and there's often a lack of filtration for freshwater. What if we could generate power and build a simple fairly maintenance free sewage treatment system in an all in one system? Would that be of value to these people? Absolutely, especially if you consider some of diseases that kill children in these villages; malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, etc.. Well, what if I told you there was a way to do just that? Here is an excerpt from a recent white paper from Penn State University on the use of bacteria in wastewater and sewage to generate power; . . .insert a fuel cell with carbon anodes in oxygen free sludge. The bacteria adhere to the anodes, which harvest the electrons to produce a current that flows through a wire to a cathode. Now then we can build septic tank type sewers and use the bacteria to eat the sludge and make electricity for lighting for the village. This would be a great way to use alternative energies and solve the sewage problem, which pollutes the water and causes even more diseases in the small villages in Third World countries. Consider this in 2006. |
