Gizmodo, that bastion of nerdtech writing, wrote yesterday about Penn State Environmental Engineering Professor Bruce Logan (He’s the older white gentleman). Logan’s current research projects include such mindblowing titles as, “Testing and Evaluation of System Materials for Creating a Scaleable Bioelectrically Assisted Microbial Reactor (BEAMR)”, and “Isolation and analysis of novel electochemically active bacteria for enhanced power generation in microbial fuel cells”, is credited by Giz with the creation of an “electric fart machine”.

Now, before you get all “Ewwwww”, the machine collects methane gas from tiny microbes.

It works like this: giving small jolts of electricity to single-celled microorganisms known as archea prompts them to remove C02 from the air and turn it into methane, released as tiny “farts.” The methane, in turn, can be used to power fuel cells or to store the electrical energy chemically until it’s needed.

How cool is that? Props to Professor Logan and his team. So, if you’ve walked around campus and you’ve smelt it, he probably dealt it.

[Gizmodo via Discovery via Treehugger via DVICE]

[Dr. Logan’s Website]