Sugar can be our source of Energy!

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A Sugar Cube, Please: I Need to Charge My Cellphone
By ANNE EISENBERG


OTS of people shun sugar these days. It's out of favor in popular low-carbohydrate diets.

But sugar may yet be redeemed. A small organism that feeds on it can convert its calories not to flab on the midriff but to a far more respectable product: a modest but steady stream of electricity.

Two scientists at the University of Massachusetts have discovered a novel sugar-loving micro-organism, Rhodoferax ferrireducens, that may one day serve as a stable source of low power.

"It's a sort of bacterial battery," said Derek R. Lovley, an environmental microbiologist who led the research. The results are reported in the current online issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Dr. Lovley cultured the bug in an Amherst laboratory, far from the aquifer in Oyster Bay, Va., where he found it. Then he housed it in a simple two-compartment fuel cell. As it fed on and metabolized sugar, the electrons freed in the process accumulated on an electrode in the fuel cell, producing a current. "It can transfer more than 80 percent of the electrons available in the sugar," Dr. Lovley said, "contrary to most previous microbial fuel cells that use sugar and deliver in the range of 10 percent."

*the rest of the article is in the NY Times website


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