Water into Wine into Hydrogen Fuel

Cool. I'm all for renewable technologies/methods developed from old processes and activities we have good reason to sustain, like winemaking.

The refrigerator-sized generator takes waste from the Napa Wine Company in Oakville, Calif., and feeds it to microbes inside. With the aid of a little electricity, these naturally occurring bacteria break the organic material in the wastewater into hydrogen gas.

There is a lot more energy locked in the wastewater than is currently used to treat it, explained researcher Bruce Logan, an environmental engineer at Penn State University. Eventually, the winery would like to use the hydrogen to run vehicles and power systems.

Even a new use for the expression, "drinking and driving." Furthermore, this holds the potential for near-perfect sustainability with a lovely little poetic twist since there's also promising research demonstrating that hydrogen fuel can also be produced from urine. Now, if only the waste from that process - salts, apparently - could be used in winemaking....