Down the drain? Not waste after all!
Tri-State Corporation is up for investing in a new technology and it is no good! Er…too good, for me to extract the evil in it. It all began years ago when I was trying to re-charge a battery in Drusselstain, my home town. Unfortunately, that battery was a precursor of the Samsung Note 7’s.
Boom!
I had blown up Roger’s room and was branded the evil guy. From that day, my evil schemes have had just one intention- a world with no batteries.
My Dear Diary, here are the details.
The circulation of electrons or ions through a conducting path is what we call electricity. As simple as it sounds, the process of generating electricity sustain-ably is not an easy task. Conventional methods involve using fossil fuels which are limited. Another major challenge is storing electricity in the form of batteries. Direct conversion of chemical energy to electricity, as it happens in batteries is a highly efficient process. However this involves a lot of toxic chemicals like lead, mercury and cadmium which are difficult to procure. Moreover these are prone to risks like leakages and explosions, like the one I had exploded.
Lifeforms derive the energy required for their metabolic activities by oxidizing their food. Any oxidation reaction is accompanied by the release of electrons. When the energy released by this life-sustaining process is harnessed in the form of electricity we get devices like bio-batteries and Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs).
A battery is a device that stores chemical energy for later release as electricity. A fuel cell is a device which converts the chemical energy of fuels directly into electrical energy. Although both operate on the same principle, a fuel cell is not designed to store energy. A battery may run out of energy, but a fuel cell supplies electricity as long as we supply the fuel.
My intentions are clear — destroy anything that’s not evil!
A bio-battery is structurally similar to a chemical battery-it has an anode and a cathode and a separator. The three compartments are divided by semi permeable membranes made of cellophane. An organic fluid fills the separator which functions as the electrolyte.
The anode is filled with the fuel and micro-organisms which feed on them. The fuel is an organic substrate containing complex carbohydrates like cellulose, starch or glucose. The micro-organisms digest the substrate to release electrons and protons. The protons move to the cathode via the separator while the electrons are transferred through the conducting path. The semi-permeable membrane ensures that oxygen in the cathode is well separated from the cathode taking care at the same time that protons find their way to the cathode.
The cost of operation depends on the source of the substrate; the bad news is that organic substrates are cheap and easily available. Carbohydrates can be obtained by mass cultivation and processing. The even worse news? Some bacteria that feed on sewage are electrically active. Sewage is a rich source of organic materials like vegetable matter and animal waste which attracts bacteria to feed upon them. Simply put, this technology allows humans to produce electricity from waste!
Not often do we encounter a technology that has little to no adverse effects. Bio-batteries and MFCs leave no toxic products. The fuel is easy to source; the demand for organic fuel will help the agriculture community by providing an alternate source of income. MFCs are easy to construct and operate with little supervision. The prospect of harnessing electrical energy from wastewater will encourage more industries to set up effluent treatment plants.
You see! That is the problem. If the corporation is planning to set up MFCs and encourage bio-batteries, it is no good. It is evil because it doesn’t do any evil. It is easy for me to stop this from being executed using my new device, the memory-erase-inator. But this is not exactly the kind of battery I wanted to get rid of.
No Doof. As an evil scientist and as the chairperson of Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated I am obliged to stop this. I need to act quick, before Agent Perry gets to know.
Till then, gut choos.
A firmly confused,
Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
