Bacteria Eat Human Sewage, Produce Rocket Fuel

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.

Bacteria Eat Human Sewage, Produce Rocket Fuel