[social_buttons] Micromidas, Inc. has turned its green eye on wastewater, and it is seeing gold. The company has developed a strain of microbes that can convert the carbon in wastewater into PHA (polyhydroxylalkanoate), a high performance plastic. PHA biodegrades quickly in compost piles and landfills, but otherwise it behaves the … [continued]
SolarBee, the North Dakota company that has made a name for itself with solar-powered circulators to improve water quality in ponds and lakes, has developed solar equipment for wastewater treatment plants as well. The devices could have a huge impact on electricity consumption at thousands of wastewater plants in the … [continued]
The workhorse of the microbe world could turn out to be Geobacter, a hairy looking organism that is actually capable of generating an electric current from mud or wastewater. Professor Derek Lovley and a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have announced that they successfully evolved a … [continued]
One solution to the world’s water pollution problems could be something you can’t taste, touch, see, smell, or hear. Especially hear. Ultrasound, the range of frequencies beyond the limits of human hearing, is starting to emerge as an effective water treatment that is more sustainable than chemical dosing. Researchers are … [continued]
The American Chemical Society reports that aerogel or “frozen smoke” may be the holy grail of sponges for capturing oil from wastewater and soaking up oil spills. Unlike other costly and inefficient sponges, hydrophobic silica aerogels are both highly porous and absorbent.
In the race to implement new energy sources, farms have an advantage: lots of manure. A large chicken farm north of Beijing is taking advantage of this fact by using its chicken manure to generate power and heat. And this isn’t just a small-time farm—the 3 million chickens on the … [continued]
