[Extract] "We reduce energy use by 85 to 90%" - Carol Maxwell - Brent Solina - MICROrganic Technologies - a podcast by Antoine Walter

Hallo, bonjour, and welcome to the Don't waste water podcast! I am your host, Antoine Walter, and in today's episode, I am delighted to welcome Carol Maxwell and Brent Solina as my guests! Carol and Brent are, respectively, CEO and CTO of MICROrganic Technologies. MICROrganic builds a Microbial Fuel Cell platform that aims to change the way the world deals with wastewater. 

Wastewater is a fascinating substance! If you're a regular listener of that podcast, you've heard me telling how it theoretically contains about seven-time the energy needed to treat it. Now, the way we deal with it today is the total opposite: we're spending huge amounts of energy to destroy that chemical potential of sewage.

How huge, you ask? Well, as Brent will share in a minute, we're talking of about 4% of the US's energy use that's employed in the blowers that turn biological basins into the brown jacuzzis we all know. 

Does it work? Yes. Is it energetically optimized? Of course not! But if we're honest, it's still the best way to deal with wastewater that we have at hand today.

The good news is that this could soon be history. Brilliant minds and entrepreneurs are at work to correct the incongruity of spending carbon-intensive energy to destroy energy. Microbial Fuel Cells, for instance, could decrease the energy needs of wastewater treatment plants by 85 to 90%!

And that's maybe still not the most promising of their features. Yes, they produce a clean DC electrical output. Yes, they're modular and adapted to basically any kind of wastewater. But even better, they could drastically ease up the operation of plants.

I won't spoil you the full explanation because Carol and Brent will do that much better than me in a minute, but let me tease you with that. Whenever your bacteria are upset because of sudden condition changes or a piece of dysfunctional equipment, they can put a reminder on your calendar. Think of that: no forensics anymore to understand what could be wrong with that complex treatment system, or even worse, what was punctually wrong and disappeared now that you're physically back on the plant. Bacteria can talk. How cool is that?

By now, you're probably as hyped as me, so I'll stop talking and let you dive into the fascinating world of microbial fuel cells with Carol and Brent. Right before, let me remind you that if you like what you hear, you can help me out tremendously by sharing that content around you.

Please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what you learned of found inspiring in what Brent and Carol share today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side. 

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