AN OBSCURE bacterium that can break down industrial waste while generating an electrical current could form the heart of a novel battery.
It may not be the first bacterium to produce a current as it munches but it is one of the most efficient, says the team working on the bugs at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. And it isn’t fussy about what it eats.
The idea of harnessing sugar-eating bacteria to generate power is not new. But most candidates either do not convert the energy in sugars very efficiently or are extremely picky about which sugars they will tuck…
