Microbial fuel cells – an amazing new technology

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A self-powered waste water treatment plant using microbes has just passed its biggest test, bringing household-level water recycling a step closer. Personal water treatment plants could soon be recycling our waste water and producing energy on the side.

Boston-based Cambrian Innovation have began field tests of what’s known as a microbial fuel cell at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland. Called BioVolt, in one day it can convert 2250 litres of sewage into enough clean water for at least 15 people. Not only that, it generates the electricity to power itself – plus a bit left over.

Conventional treatment plants guzzle energy, consuming 1.5 kilowatt-hours for every kilogram of pollutants removed. In the US, this amounts to 3 per cent of the total energy demand. If the plants could be self-powered, recycling our own waste water could become as commonplace as putting a solar panel on a roof.

Existing treatment plants use bacteria to metabolise the organic material in waste water. At the end of the process, the microbes can make up a third by weight of the leftovers to be disposed of. Before being put in landfill, this “microbe cake” itself needs to be heat-sterilised and chemically treated, which uses a lot of energy.

The idea Brhind microbial fuel cells is that the biochemistry involved in metabolising the contaminants can yield electricity to help power the process. But fuel cells of this kind have been very difficult to scale up outside the lab. But once scaled up, the Cambrian system will be processing more than 20,000 litres per day. Microbial fuel cells may do for renewable water what solar and wind did for renewable energy

Others are working on the same problem. The mix of organisms used by BioVolt, for instance, liberate some electrons as they respire, effectively turning the whole set-up into a battery. This has the added benefit of slowing bacterial growth, so that at the end of the process you have electricity and no microbe cake.

Cambrian CEO Matt Silver sees a future in which different kinds of microbial fuel cells treat different kinds of waste, perhaps recovering useful by-products. Another of the firm’s designs, EcoVolt, generates methane as it cleans up waste water produced by a Californian brewery. It has also cut the brewery’s energy use by 15 per cent and its water use by 40 per cent. (adapted from an article by Sally Adee, New Scientist)

You look around and sometimes despair of when you think of thr future of our over-crowded, over-heated planet. But then you look at what scientists are doing and faith is restored. Science is not respected among a section of the population, but it is science, and really clever science, that will see us through. Scientists are Epicureans, bringing us practical solutions to seemingly dreadful problems. We should honour them.

That persistent salary gap

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“If you’re a woman, you will earn less than a man,” observed Theresa May in her first statement as British Prime Minister. An Institute from the Fiscal Studies confirms this fact. True, some progress has been made: the difference between the average hourly pay of men and women fell from 28% in 1993 to 18% last year. But during those two decades, the gap between men and women with higher qualifications hasn’t closed at all. Women with degrees still earn 20% less per hour than men, while those with A-levels earn 25% less.

The biggest losers are mothers. By the time their first child is 12, they earn 33% less than men per hour. That discrepancy might reflect “mothers missing out on promotions, or simply accumulating less labour market experience”, according to the IFS. Training, progression and promotion are much harder to come by if you work part-time, which might be die to simply not being present a lot of the time. Whatever the reason, we seem to have “a big problem in the way we organise work in the UK”. (Based on an article by Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, in The Times, and Gemma Tetlow in the Financial Times, London).

Why is this? Is it so everywhere in the world? If so, why? Civilisation should be based on equality of reward for equality of effort. Are men still clinging to the idea of control of everything in sight, except baby rearing? If true,I simply cannot understand it. If women want to run the show, please let them. Why die young from stress and over-work if someone else will do it for you? Share, and in sharing divide the income equally, according to ability and effort. I can think of so many rewarding and creative things one can do while the ladies are shouldering the burdens of employee management, customer complaints and finance. Let them get on with it if they want to. But even if they don’t want control over everything they should have equal pay. This is a very basic Epicurean principle.

We hear about Syrians, less about Palestinians fleeing Syria

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Before the Syrian conflict in Syria began in March 2011 around 560,000 registered Palestinian refugees lived in Syria. Following five years of civil war, more than half of these people have lost their homes, and nearly all are in dire need of aid.

An estimated 110,000 Palestinians have fled Syria since 2011 according to UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency). Approximately 17,000 of these people now live Jordan and around 45,000 in Lebanon, many in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.i Over 3,000 have died inside Syria itself.

Palestinian refugees cannot register with UNHCR and instead rely on UNRWA for healthcare, education and often food and basic income. However UNRWA is struggling with a significant shortfall in funding from international donors, and in 2015 was forced to suspend the rent support payments it provided to these refugees due to lack of funds. The Palestinians were forced into exile in Syria owing to the seizure of their homes and land by the Israeli armed forces. Now they are homeless again.

If you were able to trace the ancestry of these poor people, you could arguably discover that their forebears lived in Palestine, generation after generation, for centuries; were peasants on the land when their fellow Israelite city dwellers were forced into exile by the Romans, and, later, were converted to Islam in the 7th Century by invading Mohammedans. Their plight is shocking and our individual ability to help them frustratingly poor. Nearly all the publicity is hostile to them; most have done nothing more than strive to survive. We should at least try to get UNRWA, (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) funded. It is the humane and civilised thing to do. Leave aside the disagreeable politics; do the decent thing.

Medical Aid for Palestinians | 33a Islington Park Street | London | N1 1QB | United Kingdom | +44 (0)20 7226 4114 | communityfundraising@map-uk.org

Tax collecting in the UK has become a joke

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“Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is no longer fit for purpose,” says Prem Sikka of The Guardian. Its job is to collect taxes, yet the agency is so starved of resources (its budget in 2015-16 was £3.2bn, down from £4.4bn in 2005) that it can’t carry out its job. Local tax offices have been replaced with overburdened call centres that fail to answer a quarter of calls. HMRC only has enough staff to investigate about 35 wealthy individuals a year for tax evasion. It has just 81 specialists to investigate transfer pricing practices – “a major tool for tax avoidance by multinational corporations”. It has even invited big business to join its board and design new tax policies that favour their own interests.

This can’t go on. We need to create an independent watchdog to monitor HMRC’s performance and to scrutinise any future sweetheart deals it cuts with the likes of Google. And we need to fund it properly: given that the agency “raises £75 for every £1 spent on investigating large businesses”, the case for increasing its budget is unassailable. Enact these reforms and HMRC may finally be able to do its job. (Prem Sikka. The Guardian, reproduced in The Week, 17 September 2016)

For the minor, individual taxpayer the system is disfunctional. Last year I subnitted my tax return in June. they owed me money; no reponse. In November they complained that I hadn’t filled in a section of the return (which they hadn’t sent me in the first place) and threatened a fine if it wasn’t returned within two weeks. I had to find the form online and send it by courier from the United States. You try to do the right thing early, no funny business, no avoidance, and you get this unreasonable behaviour, for tax that is peanuts in comparison to that of companies. I dread dealing with these people; they damage your peace of mind. To be fair, it is not wholly their fault; it is the fault of a right-wing government and the corporations who want a feeble tax collecting agency. No surprise that some taxpayers cut corners.