In the Back to the Future films, Doc Brown ran his DeLorean time machine on food scraps. It was a fun bit of science fiction. But researchers at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Canada are investigating the potential for using food waste to generate power.
Food waste is not a candidate to replace solar or wind power, but it could be a source of energy for powering fuel cells. As it is, food waste represents a sustainability challenge because of its detrimental impacts on the economy and the environment. Organic waste represents a significant fraction of the material in landfills and contributes to methane production, air pollution, and other harmful pollutants.
The UBC researchers focused on fruit waste, which is abundantly available in agricultural regions. They have devised microbial fuel cells that convert fruit waste into electrical energy using an anaerobic anode compartment. That is a chamber in which anaerobic microbes – ones that don’t need oxygen – utilize the organic matter to convert it into energy. The microbes consume the fruit waste and produce water while generating bioelectricity.
It is not like the Back to the Future time machine where you can just toss in scraps of whatever is on hand. Different types of fruits provide different results when used in the microbial fuel cell. The process works best when the food waste is separated and ground into small particles. There is a long way to go before the technology could produce bioenergy on a commercial scale, but there is considerable potential for doing something useful with something that is currently worthless.
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UBCO researchers aim to energize fruit waste
Photo, posted July 24, 2011, courtesy of Andrew Girdwood via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
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