Microbial-Fueled Battery get Electricity from Organic Bacteria

The Harvard students team has managed to find new sources of alternative energy from bacteria that live in the organic waste in the soil to generate electric energy and stored in microbial fuel cell (MFC) as battery.

The team has found that bacteria release an energy on metabolizing dead leaves, compost and other organic waste. The energy energy can be transformed into a small electric currents by inserting an electrode or an electric conductor such as copper wire to make chemical reaction of electrons.

The test-drove of MFC batteries in villages in Namibia, Africa, using soil and manure to fuel the batteries. Microbial-fueled battery has been proven capable of powering LED for one year. The process of getting energy from dirty extraction has been able to give us clean energy with minimal cost and environmentally friendly.