Fuel Up With Banana Peels

Mad scientist Doc Brown powers his time machine by feeding coffee grounds and other biowaste into the DeLorean in Back to the Future. While time travel is still in the realm of science fiction, carbon-based fuel cells are about to become science fact — rendering a similar scenario all the more possible. SRI announced in November that it has developed direct carbon fuel-cell technology.

The process is 70 percent efficient, double that of traditional coal power plants, according to Larry Dubois, vice president of the physical sciences division at SRI. SRI researchers have shown that in a single step, they can take pulverized coal — or anything else that contains carbon, including human waste or banana peels, for example — and directly transform the fuel’s chemical energy into electricity by electrochemically oxidizing the carbon.

wired