If a wind turbine already generated electrical energy, and energy is lost converting it to methane and then back again into electricity, why not just stick the electricity into a battery and save more of it? "How big a battery do you have?" answered Logan. It would take a large, expensive battery to store all that electricity. A fuel cell would be an easier and cheaper way to store and transport it. Yet the single-step archea model is suspiciously simple, said Bruce Rittmann, a microbiologist at Arizona State University. Rittman isn't convinced that Logan's team found archea capable of converting CO2 to methane in one step. "It just doesn't have the cellular machinery to turn electrons directly into methane," said Rittman, who is drafting a paper arguing against Logan's technique. "It's an interesting discovery, producing methane with electricity from the cathode," said Rittman. It just might be too good to be true. Related Links: Environmental Science and Technology TreeHugger.com: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Waste Water to Be Bottled and Sold in India |
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