Research and scale-up of a microbial fuel cell for renewable energy storage

使用可再生的一次能源，特别是风能和太阳能，具有最大的潜力，可以解决世界范围内，更具体地说，在加拿大，目前发电的环境和长期燃料供应问题。不幸的是，风能和太阳能发电技术都有一个显著的缺点，即不稳定性，这通常是不可预测的。如果不能有效地平滑或储存能源，可再生能源的广泛使用就不可能可行。最近，有人说，“电力存储确实是可再生能源的圣杯”。目前，还没有成熟的、具有成本效益和广泛适用的储能技术。在正在开发的不同存储技术中，基于氢的存储似乎具有很大的前景。氢能储存的关键要素之一是将氢转化为电。一种独特的氢再电气化技术，名为生物发电机，是由该提案的PI与学生和研究人员合作开发的，并由UWO在全球范围内获得专利。 该提案的总体目标是：（1）通过研究生物发电机的基本特性，包括生物平衡、流体力学、传质和电化学，显著改善生物发电机的技术特性;（2）通过扩大规模、成本分析和系统集成，努力实现生物发电机的商业化。

The use of renewable primary energy sources, particularly wind and solar, possesses the greatest potential for solving both the environmental and long-term fuel availability problems of current electrical power generation world-wide, and more specifically, in Canada. Unfortunately, both wind and solar power generation technologies share one significant drawback intermittency, which is often unpredictable. Without effective smoothing or storage of energy, the widespread use of renewables cannot be viable. Recently, it was stated that “electricity storage really is the Holy Grail” of renewable power. Currently, there is no well-established, cost-efficient and widely applicable energy storage technology. Among the different storage technologies under development, it appears that hydrogen-based storage holds a great promise. One of the key elements in hydrogen energy storage is the conversion of hydrogen to electricity. A unique hydrogen re-electrification technology, named BioGenerator, was developed by the PI of this proposal in collaboration with students and researchers and was patented worldwide by the UWO. The general objectives of this proposal are: (1) to improve significantly the technical characteristics of the BioGenerator by studying its fundamental properties, including the biokinetics, hydrodynamics, mass transfer and electrochemistry; and (2) to work towards commercialization of the BioGenerator by performing scale-up, cost analysis and system integration.