The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: June 11, 2006

Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: POWER FROM CHOCOLATE WASTE

Chocolate. Yum. One of the nature's gifts to humankind. But chocolate factories do produce a lot of waste, which isn't much use to anyone.

Energy. Oh dear. We need it, but we're running out of fuels.

Combine the two. Get energy from the stuff that chocolate factories would otherwise throw away. What a great idea! Microbiologist Lynne Mackaskie from the UK's University of Birmingham has done just that. She and her colleagues have powered a fuel cell by feeding sugar-loving bacteria chocolate-factory waste. "We wanted to see if we tipped chocolate into one end, could we get electricity out at the other?" she says.

Well it wasn't really chocolate: they fed diluted caramel and nougat waste to e.coli bacteria, which consumed the sugar and produced hydrogen. The researchers then used the output to power a fuel cell, which generated enough electricity to drive a small fan.

This sounds very promising!


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