I haven’t kept you up to date on the new things going on with 3D printing- you know, where you can “print” a real object. Sometimes called rapid prototyping, sometimes called additive layer manufacturing, these “printers” can use cells (as in living things), plastics, or other materials to construct the desired shapes or objects. The objects are “built up” by printing very thin layers repetitively- of the same material or different materials (to yield flexibility, strength, implantation, etc.) until the desired thickness is achieved.
Monthly Archives: May 2012
Energy from sewage- revisited
We reported yesterday about Dr. Bretschger’s (J. Craig Venter Institute) MFC (microbial fuel cells) to recover energy from wastewater. Today, we’ll discuss a slightly different version, under development at Penn State University and for which results were recently published in Science.
Sewage as an energy source?
One of my theses involved the conversion of Honest-to-Goodness Solid Waste (HGSW) to energy. The process made sense then- and makes even more sense now. (Believe it or not, there’s only one company examining this process on a large scale, some 4 decades later.) But, we also need to treat our liquid wastes (sewage)- because we want to keep our rivers and streams (which is where we discharged those treated waters) safe. Amazingly, we employ about 2% of our energy supply to treat this waste stream.