According to a new study published this month in the journal Bioresource Technology Reports, marijuana may have even more benefits than we thought.
Turkish scientists have used a marijuana consumer’s urine to product electricity. They successfully removed cannabis metabolites from the urine and in the process generated electricity.
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are bio-electrochemical tools that put chemical compounds and select bacteria together to produce electricity.
The scientists found that putting synthetic and real urine that contains THC metabolites in an MFC produced both effects: 60 percent of the metabolite COOH-THC was eliminated while at the same time generating electricity.
“Untreated urine samples pooled from drug-free male donors produced 0.35 V of peak electricity in the fuel cells,” the researchers explained. “When the urine samples were replaced with those from cannabis users (containing 170 ng/mL of COOH-THC), the maximum voltage of 0.23 V was achieved.”
“Thus, optimized MFCs with an accurately established microbial community could offer an efficient solution to this critical issue,” the team said. “Moreover, although in small levels, voltage generation provides an added-value that could be used to power certain applications in the treatment plants.”
“The results showed that MFCs can be used for treatment of cannabis metabolites found in human urine to prevent contamination of natural ecosystems with these resilient and toxic metabolites,” they said.
