乳清使供电更环保

IT MAY seem ridiculous, but in the hunt for sources of alternative energy researchers have come up with fuel cells which are powered by cheese—or at least whey, a by-product in cheese making. Whey is rich in lactose, a sugar which Georgia Antonopoulou, a biochemical engineer at the University of Patras, Greece, says can be consumed by cultures of bacteria contained within a fuel cell to generate an electric current. Microbial fuel cells, as such devices are known, are not a new idea but they are attracting more attention.

虽然可能看上去比较荒谬，但能源科学家在寻找可替代能源时提出一种以奶酪（或者说是乳清，制奶酪过程中的副产品）供能的燃料电池。乳清里含有大量的乳糖，希腊Patras大学生物工程师Georgia Antonopoulou说，这种糖类会被燃料电池里微生物的生长所消耗而产生电流。微生物燃料电池这种器件正在吸引更多的人去关注，虽然这已经不是一种全新的观念了。

The organic content of whey can pose an environmental hazard and many governments now impose strict regulations requiring factories to pay for its treatment before disposal. Whey constitutes about 70% of the volume of the milk used to make cheese. So, just one small feta facility will need to dispose of as much as 4,000 tonnes of whey in a single year, says Dr Antonopoulou. Microbial fuel cells could help, and not just in the cheese-making industry. Breweries, pig farms, food-processing plants and even sewage works could gain from the technology.更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

乳清里的有机物会造成环境污染，许多国家现在强制性要求工厂必须要有相应的清洁处理措施。用来制造奶酪的牛奶中，乳清占其体积的70%。Antonopoulou博士说，所以，仅仅是一个小型乳酪制造厂一年就需要处理4000吨乳清。微生物燃料电池不仅仅能为奶酪制造工业上提供帮助，酿酒厂，养猪场，食品加工厂甚至于污水处理工程都能从这项技术中得到好处。

Traditional fuel cells work by using a catalytic material to oxidise a fuel, such as hydrogen, and make an electric current flow between two electrodes. Microbial fuel cells function in much the same way except that the catalytic reactions are carried out by bacteria contained within the fuel-cell chamber. Under anaerobic conditions (where oxygen is absent) they metabolise the fuel by feeding off it and in doing so produce natural chemical reactions that produce a current.

传统的燃料电池是通过催化材料（比如氢）来氧化燃料，然后使两电级间产生电流。微生物燃料电池也是如此，除了它的催化反应是通过燃料电池内部的微生物来实现的。在厌氧条件下（比如缺氧的地方）通过取食产生新诚代谢并以此引起化学反应产生电流。

In theory microbial fuel cells can run on almost any kind of organic matter, says Chris Melhuish, head of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, England. “All you have to do is match the microbial culture with the type of stuff you want to use as fuel,” he says. Dr Melhuish has been trying to power robots on domestic waste-water, but it is tricky. Ideally you would want to use cheap raw-waste products, he says. But traditionally the fuel cells work best with a refined fuel in the form of solutions containing synthetic sugars, such as glucose.

英国布里斯托尔机器人实验室负责人Chris Melhuish说，微生物燃料电池在理论上几乎能在所有有机物上工作。而我们要做的仅仅是以你想要的燃料方式去配对微生物的培养基。Melhuish博士曾试图用家用废用水来作为机器人的能源，但是这远比想象中要困难，因为理想情况下你更愿意使用廉价的原材料废品。但是传统上燃料电池在与含合成糖的液态精炼燃料(比如葡萄糖）能发挥更好的效果。

However, Dr Antonopoulou has now shown that, using a culture of bacteria obtained from her local waste-water plant, it is possible to get almost as much power from raw whey as from refined fuel, provided the whey is diluted. The trouble is the power output still only amounts to milliwatts, barely enough to trickle-charge a cellphone. And working with raw waste water also presents challenges.

然而，Antonopoulou博士指出，那些从她本地废水培养的微生物生长所带来的能量几乎与从精炼燃料中原乳清稀释后所产生的一样多。问题是输出的功率仅仅达到毫瓦，勉强可以为手机小电流充电。而怎样使用原废水也面临着困难。

Initially Dr Antonopoulou and her colleagues found that the coulombic efficiency of their cells—a measure of how many electrons produced actually flow into a circuit—was particularly low, at around just 2%. This turned out to be because a second set of microbes, within the whey itself, was absorbing them. So, by sterilising the whey first to kill these other bugs they have now boosted the coulombic efficiency to around 25%.

首先Antonopoulou博士和她的同事发现其实那些电池的库伦效率（电路所实际产生的电子量与流经电路的电流之比）是非常低的，只有2%左右。这是因为被乳清内的某些微生物所吸收了。所以，现在用对乳清先进行灭菌来消除这种缺陷得方法可以将库伦效率提高到25%左右。

The total power of the device should improve further with a new design that increases the surface area of the electrodes within the fuel cell. One of the biggest obstacles is a lack of investment to develop materials that would work better with microbial fuel cells. If the various hurdles can be overcome and the devices can be scaled up to industrial levels, then the technology can only mature; just like a good cheese.

一种增大燃料电池内电极表面积的新设计也提高了这种设备的总功率。这种设计最大的缺陷之一，就是在开发与微生物燃料电池反应更好材料的过程中缺乏投资。而只有当这些困难得以解决并将这些装置应用到工业化的高度时，这项科技才能说真正成熟；就像一块非常棒的奶酪一样。