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Portable toilets stink. It’s an undeniable fact.
But a group of physicists and engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a way to make the semi-public experience a little more palatable, if not downright socially responsible.
Dubbed Bug Power by team leaders and UMass Amherst doctoral candidates Nikhil Malvankar (physics) and Xuan Huang (operations management), the startup proposes a portable water closet that uses bacteria to clean up waste, eliminate odor and generate its own electricity.
The idea recently passed the sniff test for 11 judges in the UMass Amherst College of Engineering’s Innovation Challenge business plan competition, who awarded the group first prize — and the accompanying $5,000 — in December. In addition to the cash, the group, which includes undergraduate seniors Danxiang Li (electrical engineering) and Mario Dongo (computer engineering), will attend a four-day Advanced Invention to Venture Workshop put on by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance this week to help hone the idea and, hopefully, turn Bug Power into a viable business.
The essence of the company is a particular strain of bacteria and an associated microbial fuel cell. According to Malvankar, a recipient of the Eugene M. Isenberg Award at UMass, the bacteria’s ability to generate small amounts of current made it useful, but only for certain applications.
“It doesn’t generate enough energy to compete with wind or solar, and it isn’t really cost effective for waste water treatment,” he said. “But it works well in portable toilets, which are traditionally very unpleasing places.”
The system can produce enough power for the unit’s fan and light, according to Malvankar.
Bug Power’s bacteria doesn’t break down all the waste, but Malvankar said that when dealing with porta potties, any reduction is an improvement.
“If we can even reduce the servicing by half, it will be a huge savings for distributors,” he said.
While Bug Power’s application may be novel, the potential of microbial fuel cells is being looked at in several other local companies. Fall River’s Hy-SyEnce Inc. and Cambridge’s IntAct Labs LLC are applying the technology to generating large-scale power from waste water and industrial waste products. At Harvard University, a group led by researcher Peter Girguis is hoping the technology can help provide power for lighting and other systems in developing nations.
Power from puny bugs
Microbial fuel cells work on the same premise as traditional fuel cells — a catalyst between an anode and a cathode is stimulated to produce electron flow. But unlike traditional fuel cells that use metal catalysts, such as platinum, MFCs use microbes, which consume organic fuel and generate power. While the premise has been known for decades, the microbes traditionally were engineered in labs. Recent discoveries have uncovered strains of naturally occurring bacteria that can perform the task, and that has brought commercially viable MFCs closer to reality.
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