Saturday, August 25, 2007

Cow-powered Fuel Cells Grow Smaller, Mightier

Cows could one day help to meet the rise in demand for alternative energy sources, say Ohio State University researchers that used microbe-rich fluid from a cow to generate electricity in a small fuel cell.

This new microbial fuel cell is a redesign of a larger model that the researchers created a few years ago. The new cell is a quarter of the size of the original model, yet can produce about three times the power, said Hamid Rismani-Yazdi, a doctoral student in food, agricultural and biological engineering at Ohio State University.

Experiments showed that it took two of the new cells to produce enough electricity to recharge a AA-sized battery. It took four of the first-generation fuel cells to recharge just one of these batteries....

From ScienceDaily