Biological conversion of hydrogen to electricity for energy storage

Dimitre Karamanev, Victor Pupkevich, Kalin Penev, Vassili Glibin, Jay Gohil and Vahid Vajihinejad

Energy, 2017, vol. 129, issue C, 237-245

Abstract: Energy storage is currently one of the most significant problems associated with mass-scale usage of renewable (i.e. wind and solar) power sources. The use of hydrogen as an energy storage medium is very promising, but is hampered by the lack of commercially available hydrogen-to-electricity (H2e) converters. Here we are presenting the first commercially viable, biologically based technology for H2e conversion named the BioGenerator. It is a microbial fuel cell based on electron consumption resulting from the respiration of chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms. The results obtained during the scale-up study of the BioGenerator showed a maximum specific current of 1.35 A/cm2, maximum power density of 1800 W/m2 and stable electricity generation over a period spanning longer than four years. The largest unit studied so far has a volume of 600 L and a power output of 0.3 kW.

Keywords: Hydrogen to electricity; BioGenerator; Bioelectrochemical technology; Microbial fuel cell; Energy storage; Leptospirillum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421730676X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:129:y:2017:i:c:p:237-245

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2017.04.110

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().