At CASCADE Clean Energy, Inc., researchers have developed a system that uses "smart" microbes to recover energy from wastewater, including sewage. CASCADE is a spin-off from Quantum Intelligence, Inc., whose CEO, Dr. Charles Zhou, was the lead researcher on the Waste Water Works (WWW) technology. The name CASCADE is an acronym for Computer-Assisted Strain Construction and Development Engineering, a screening platform and methodology that allows for the selection of specific and highly optimized organisms in varying wastewater streams.

According to Zhou - who is being called the "Bill Gates of wastewater" - 99 percent of wastewater treatment plants don't recover any energy from wastewater, even though such waste streams contain a plethora of methane-producing organisms whose output could, in effect, power the plants. Instead, such plants merely process the waste, contributing 30 million tons of emissions yearly.

The profit potential behind the WWW is enormous; a potential $15 billion in the U.S. alone, and $60 billion globally. More important than profit, though, is the fact that such systems could deliver waste treatment off-the-grid to the 42 percent of the world's population who don't have access to basic sanitation facilities. This abundance of untreated human waste contributes to disease by infecting groundwater supplies, causing 2.2 million deaths a year worldwide, most of them children, because most third-world countries can't afford the high cost of treating such effluent.

Waste Water Works, developed via the U.S. Army's Small Business Innovation Research Phase I & II projects, uses the microbial fuel cell (MFC) approach, which drives a current by mimicking bacterial interactions found in nature. Using the aforementioned "smart" (i.e., identified or engineered) microorganisms to optimize the sludge digestion process, the system then applies MFC technology to recover the energy by creating a "peer profile" for the various organisms.

According to startup CASCADE, this makes it possible to customize and find efficient microbes - or even to discover new microorganisms - that lend themselves to electricity generation based on the original bio-content of the wastewater stream. This novel selection method, which selects bacteria to maximize yields, significantly increases the conversion rates of both hydrogen and electricity production.

Unlike most aerobic (i.e., oxygen-based) systems used in wastewater treatment facilities today, the CASCADE methane system uses an anaerobic digestion system to biodegrade wastewater components. This "dark fermentation" (think mushrooms in a vacuum) produces hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide - as well as a number of other greenhouse gases. These anaerobic systems use much less energy than aerobic systems; about 100 kilowatt hours of energy per month - or a mere 7 percent of the energy required by an aerobic system. The average residence uses 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a month.

Clean Tech Open has since acquired the technology, and is using it to develop and market a CASCADE Clean Energy System (CCES) to serve the U.S. Navy aboard its ships, and hopes to extend product range to the U.S. food processing industry and wastewater treatment plants. The two-solution CASCADE system (methane production, followed by microbial fuel cell electricity production) will be offered first to wastewater plants needing little or no retrofitting. In five years, however, it is hoped the WWW system will be up and running in a majority of U.S. wastewater treatment plants.

Dr. Zhou - or should we call him Dr. Gates? - is a pioneer who holds a patent on knowledge pattern searching from networked agents. This method searches for new information using knowledge patterns derived via data and text mining, machine learning and pattern recognition methods, and uses the result to drive new concepts and develop new products for business applications. To understand better how the process works, and how many applications it can be applied to, visit Quantum Intelligence's product page.

Other good stuff on Celsias:
Salt n' Solar: The Revolution in Technology
How to Make Electricity from Wasted Energy

Get Celsias on Twitter!  Follow us: Celsiastweets