Energy Production and Storage in Bioelectrochemical Systems

生物电化学系统中的能量生产和存储

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-06593
• 负责人: Tartakovsky, Boris
• 金额: $ 1.82万
• 依托单位: École Polytechnique de Montréal
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=680631
• 关键词: Energy; Production; Storage; Bioelectrochemical; Systems

Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) were introduced only about 15 years ago. Nevertheless, these systems have attracted considerable attention of the scientific and engineering communities as demonstrated by an exponentially growing number of publications and several scale-up attempts. Wastewater treatment was one of the first proposed BES applications and it remains at the focus of research efforts worldwide, as this technology perfectly fits future scenarios of renewable energy production. Advances in understanding the microbiology of BESs and improved electrode materials have led to orders-of-magnitude performance increase. Yet, both capital and operating costs of BES-based wastewater treatment systems remain high, thus requiring further research in improved process design and control.***One important feature of BESs that became obvious in our recent experiments and which is largely overlooked so far is the significant internal capacitance of BESs such as Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) and Microbial Electrolysis Cells (MECs). Indeed, in these systems both anode and cathode are made of highly conductive materials with large surface areas. Also, the electrodes are covered in electroactive biofilms with additional charge storage capacity. BESs can be operated using inexpensive carbon sources, such as wastewater. Therefore, BESs could combine wastewater treatment (e.g. municipal or agricultural wastewater) with energy production. Simultaneously, charge storage in electroactive biofilms could and should be exploited for improved performance and, eventually, for electricity storage (e.g for fast on-demand return to the grid during peak loads).***Overall, the proposed research program will be aimed at the development of novel microbial electrochemical technologies (METs), which would combine wastewater treatment with energy production and storage. This objective will be achieved through a combination of experimental and modeling techniques, where advanced process models will be developed and then used to design microbial electrochemical reactors (MFCs and MECs) and advanced real-time process control methods. The proposed reactor designs and operating strategies will be experimentally validated to confirm technology performance as well as to provide comprehensive training of graduate students.

生物电化学系统（BESs）在15年前才被引入。尽管如此，这些系统已经引起了科学和工程界的相当大的关注，正如成倍增长的出版物和几次扩大规模的尝试所证明的那样。废水处理是最早提出的BES应用之一，它仍然是世界范围内研究工作的重点，因为这项技术完全符合未来可再生能源生产的设想。在了解BESs微生物学和改进电极材料方面的进展导致了数量级的性能提高。然而，基于bes的废水处理系统的资本和运营成本仍然很高，因此需要进一步研究改进的过程设计和控制。***在我们最近的实验中，BESs的一个重要特征变得很明显，但迄今为止在很大程度上被忽视了，那就是BESs(如微生物燃料电池（MFCs）和微生物电解电池（MECs）的重要内部电容。事实上，在这些系统中，阳极和阴极都是由具有大表面积的高导电性材料制成的。此外，电极被电活性生物膜覆盖，具有额外的电荷存储容量。BESs可以使用廉价的碳源，如废水来运行。因此，BESs可以将废水处理（例如城市或农业废水）与能源生产结合起来。同时，电活性生物膜中的电荷存储可以而且应该用于提高性能，并最终用于电力存储（例如，在高峰负荷期间快速按需返回电网）。***总的来说，拟议的研究计划将旨在开发新型微生物电化学技术（METs），该技术将把废水处理与能源生产和储存结合起来。这一目标将通过实验和建模技术的结合来实现，其中先进的过程模型将被开发出来，然后用于设计微生物电化学反应器（mfc和MECs）和先进的实时过程控制方法。所提出的反应器设计和操作策略将进行实验验证，以确认技术性能并为研究生提供全面的培训。