The new anode can transfer electrolytes from bacteria in wastewater to a microbial fuel cell.
Image: Science Advances

With 783 million people world-wide lacking access to clean drinking water and more than 35 percent of the world’s population without access to improved sanitation facilities, researchers are pursuing new ways to clean wastewater that is both effective and energy efficient.

An interdisciplinary team from multiple institutions in China has developed a new freestanding anode that can take harmful electrolytes form bacteria in wastewater and transfer them to a microbial fuel cell. This new process opens the door to effectively cleaning wastewater while converting waste to electricity.

The treatment of wastewater is an essential, yet energy intensive, process. While scientists have been exploring new ways to treat wastewater, none of the option has been very energy efficient.

Many current wastewater treatment plants function through fermentation and the burning of methane. The research team from China opts for an alternative method, where they create sewage-based fuel cells that pull the bacterial electrolytes and create electricity.

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In honor of Open Access Week 2015 (October 19-25), ECS removed the paywall from the Digital Library in order to show readers our vision of the future.

Now, we need your help. Please take a few minutes to complete our brief (4 question) survey to share your feedback on ECS’s participation in Open Access Week, as well as ECS’s transition to Open Access.

Take the survey.

There are less than 30 days left to submit your abstracts for the 229th ECS Meeting! Make sure to submit by December 11, 2015.

Submit today!

Topic Close-up #6
SYMPOSIUM H03: Properties and Applications of 2-Dimensional Layered Materials.

FOCUSED ON electronic, optoelectronic, mechanical and chemical properties and potential applications of 2D layered materials with the focus on boron nitrides, silicene and germanene, graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides/oxides, and group-IV and group-III metal chalcogenides.

NOTING THAT the symposium includes materials preparation, growth, processing, devices, chemistry, physics, theory and applications, it also provides a forum for researchers, scientists and engineers from different countries worldwide, who are actively involved in the research on 2D layered materials to disseminate their latest research results and developments. Learn about all the topics!

Did You Know?
Students can be eligible for the General Student Poster Session awards by submitting an abstract to Z01 – General Society Student Poster Session.

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With a vast array of educational channels, YouTube is a perfect medium to get your science fix. Whether you need answers to some of life’s biggest questions or just want to watch things blow up, there’s sure to be something for you.

Here at ECS, we love creating videos about our scientists and their work on our own YouTube channel. Equally, we enjoy browsing the network of knowledge to find the newest and most innovative science videos. Check out our favorite channels that will inspire and inform.

1. Periodic Table of Videos

What you’ll learn: Interesting facts about all elements on the periodic table, plus some great experiments in blowing things up.

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Bor Yann Liaw is a respected battery-related researcher, working in advanced power sources and energy storage systems at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. He has recently been appointed to the ECS Electrochemical Science & Technology (EST) Editorial Board as an Associate Editor for a two year-term, concentrating in Batteries & Energy Storage.

What do you hope to accomplish in your new role as the EST Editorial Board Assistant Editor?
I think that the impact of the journal is very high, but we need to have more people get involved. I am hoping to promote high-quality papers to be submitted to the journal and be part of the effort to promote the awareness of the journal.

What type of expertise do you bring?
I’ve been working in this area for about three decades, so I think that I have enough knowledge between the newer developments of materials, especially in the nano area, versus the most traditional and classic framework of electrochemistry. We’ll see whether we can bridge the technology gap between the two sets of skills into a more coherent framework, so we understand how the materials in a nanoscale can relate to the classical models or understandings for the electrochemistry.

What are the practical applications regarding your research in sugar-air batteries?
Recently we were working with farmers in Hawaii. We have a lot of papaya that are not marketable, which means they look ugly and are not really sellable. We can take those papaya and grind them up and take the juice and put it into a battery and it’s worked like a charm.

What initially got you interested in science?
My parents are both teachers, so I was inspired in the teaching and the education of possibilities of science. Another thing is probably more with my personality. I’m interested in exploring everything that occurs in our daily lives.

What is the biggest challenge going forward for clean energy?
We probably have to come back to more fundamental understandings and make things much easier and simpler so the cost can come down and the impact to the environment can be drastically reduced.

Researchers across the globe have been investing more and more effort into developing new materials to power the next generation of devices. With the population growing and energy demands rising, the need for smaller, faster, and more efficient batteries is more prevalent than ever.

While some researchers are attempting to develop complex material combinations to tackle this issue, researchers from Rice University are going back to basics by developing a clay-based electrolyte.

Utilizing clay as a primary material in a lithium ion battery could address current issues that the battery has with high temperature performance. With clay, the researchers were able to supply stable electrical power in environments with temperatures up 120°C. The addition of clay to the electrode could allow lithium ion batteries to function in harsh environments including space, defense, and oil and gas applications.

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Meeting attendees discussing the research presented at the Student Poster Session.

ECS established General Student Poster Session Awards in 1993 to acknowledge the excellence and diligence of our students’ work. The winners demonstrate a deep understanding of their research topic and how it relates to one or more of the fields of interest to The Electrochemical Society. At each biannual ECS meeting, awards are given to students in two categories, electrochemical science and solid state science and technology. First and second place winners receive a certificate in addition to a cash award.

The 228th ECS Meeting Student Poster Session award winners holding their certificates.

For the 228^th ECS Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, the first place winners are Daiki Ito, and Xiaoxing Xia. Daiki Ito of Nagoya University, was the Solid State winner, and Xiaoxing Xia, of California Institute of Technology, was the Electrochemical Science winner. The second place winners were Kenta Machida of Kogakuin University and Subrahmanyam Goriparti of Instituto Italiano Di Technologia. Congratulations to all four winners!

In order to be eligible for the General Student Poster Session Awards, students must submit their abstracts to the Z01 General Society Student Poster Session symposium, and present their posters at the biannual meeting.

First place winner, Xiaoxing Xia accepting his certificate.

The submission deadline for the upcoming 229^th ECS Meeting in San Diego is December 11, 2015.

Submit your abstract for the San Diego meeting today.

On October 26^th, 2015, the ECS British Columbia Student Chapter held its 1^st Annual Academic Workshop.

The workshop was held at the Molecular Biology and Chemistry Building located at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. It attracted nearly 40 attendees from all different departments and disciplines at The University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and Tsinghua University, China. Also in attendance was the Chair of ECS Canada Section, Dr. Michael Eickerling.

The attendees were given a detailed presentation from Dr. Andrei Kulikovsky on the topic of Physical Models of Impedance Spectroscopy for PEM fuel cells. Dr. Kulikovsky visited all the way from Germany for the workshop, where he is involved in modeling fuel cell components and stacks. Within the past fifteen years, Dr. Kulikovsky has published more than seventy research papers.

In 2012, he published a one-of-a-kind book called Analytical Modeling of Fuel Cells. This book is the first monograph on modeling of polymer electrolyte, direct methanol and solid oxide fuel cells performance. Dr. Kulikovsky’s current research interests include modeling of fuel cells and catalyst layers.

Dr. Andrei Kulikovsky beginning the workshop.

Attendees keenly listening to the talk and taking notes.

Congratulations on a successful workshop!

The electric current was able to kill almost all drug resistant bacterium within 24 hours.
Image: Nature

A new alternative to traditional antibiotics is on the horizon. Through the application of electrical stimulation, researchers from Washington State University have found a way to kill drug resistant bacterium without the need for antibiotics.

“We have been doing fundamental research on this for many years, and finally, we are able to transfer it to technology,’’ says Haluk Beyenal, ECS member and co-author of the study. “It’s really exciting.’’

While these results are groundbreaking for biomedical science, the idea of treating infection through electrical stimulation is not new. Researchers have been attempting to do this for years, but have not been able to perfect the method.

Because of this, antibiotics have become the most effective and preferred treatment choice for infections. However, as antibiotic use increases, the bacteria being treated begin to adapt. Drug resistant strains then begin to form, which infect at least two million people a year in the United States alone. From those two million, about 23,000 people die annually as a direct result. With this, researchers see the need to find an alternative form of treatment for bacterial infection.

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The PhD Student Poster Awards of the PEFC 15 Symposium held at the 228th ECS Meeting in Phoenix, AZ, Oct. 2015 were presented to (pictured left to right) Shuntaro Takahashi (Tohoku University, Japan), Yuji Chino (Yamanashi University, Japan), and Peter Dudenas (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) for their excellent scientific contributions in the field of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell Research.

PEFC 15 symposium organizers, Thomas Schmidt and Hubert Gasteiger, are also pictured.

Twenty-three posters were entered. See them all here.