GRGR evacuation, transformation & the Rocket

[pynchonoid]

Bacteria Eat Human Sewage, Produce Rocket Fuel
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
November 9, 2005

The high cost of treating human wastewater may one day
tank thanks to a bacterium that eats ammonia and
produces rocket fuel.

Standard water treatment plants use oxygen-hungry
bacteria to break down human waste. To feed the
microbes, plants must aerate sewage sludge with
costly, power-hogging equipment.

But Brocadia anammoxidans, or anammox bacteria,
survive without oxygen, producing energy from nitrite
and ammonia, which is found naturally in human waste.

"Conventional [bacteria] treatments do a good job, so
the big benefit is doing this much more efficiently
and cheaply," said Marc Strous, a microbiologist at
the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

Strous says savings could be enormous, up to 90
percent versus standard sewage treatment plants. A
prototype facility in Rotterdam is already earning
praise.

Rocket Fuel

Scientists first discovered anammox bacteria in yeast
and later in the open ocean in the late 1990s.

The unusual microbes consume ammonia, producing
hydrazine—better known as rocket fuel—in the process.
The ability still puzzles scientists.

"They are the only organism on Earth that produces
hydrazine, so until their discovery, [hydrazine] was
thought to be a man-made substance," Strous said.
[...]

...read it all: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1109_051109_rocketfuel.html

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