Dive Summary:

• Researchers at Oregon State University have perfected a new technology that efficiently creates electricity from wastewater.  This may eventually allow waste treatment plants to generate and sell excess electricity.  
• The new technology can produce up to  50 times the electricity of other current approaches.
• The approach has been proven at scale in the laboratory.  Funding is now being pursued for a production scale pilot of the technology.

From the article:

Engineers at Oregon State University have made a breakthrough in the performance of microbial fuel cells that can produce electricity directly from wastewater, opening the door to a future in which waste treatment plants not only will power themselves, but will sell excess electricity.

The new technology developed at OSU can now produce 10 to 50 more times the electricity, per volume, than most other approaches using microbial fuel cells, and 100 times more electricity than some.

Researchers say this could eventually change the way that wastewater is treated all over the world, replacing the widely used "activated sludge" process that has been in use for almost a century.