A couple of rules that most people can agree on: Humans need water to survive, and that while living in groups humans will produce waste water of some kind. How to keep that water clean and divest ourselves of that waste has been an ongoing problem, especially in large scale urban living environments.
However, new technology from Pennsylvania State University might not only clean water, but produce enough electrical power to be self-sustaining.The Penn State device is a hybrid one, comprised of two fundamental pieces of technology: Microbial fuel cells and reverse electrodialysis. The two techniques can generate power in their own right, but on their own they cannot practically be made self-sustaining.
