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Researchers from the Sanitation and Environmental Technologies Laboratory at USP found a way to produce renewable energy from the sewer, using a kind of biobattery. According to the research published by the entity, the researchers built a model of Microbial Fuel Cell (CCM) capable of producing energy from discarded water.
The research group of the Graduate Program in Sustainability, responsible for the biobattery, is currently working with his supervisors on improvements that seek to optimize the prototypes to make them more efficient and capable of generating a greater amount of electricity.
According to those responsible for the study and development, the prototypes are the product of previous research, which was carried out with the intention of recovering a variety of resources from water treatment plants. These systems, developed by technologies and processes, are no longer consumers of electricity, becoming generators of new energy resources.
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How the Microbial Fuel Cell developed by Brazilian researchers at USP works
The functioning of Microbial Fuel Cell Biobattery consists of two separate chambers. In one of them, where the treatment takes place, the bacteria grow creating a biofilm on the conductive material and feed on the pollutants present in the effluent delivered to the chamber. Electrogenic bacteria are able to spontaneously create an electric current through the process of feeding these substances, which is then transmitted to the conductive material on which the bacteria build the biofilm.
A electric current generated in the first chamber is collected and then transferred, through an external circuit, to the second chamber, where a chemical reaction takes place. A the energy that is produced by the system and that can be used to power batteries or electronic devices is the electric current that flows through the conductive wire when passing from one chamber to another.
The more favorable the conditions are for these bacteria, such as the increased temperature in the Microbial Fuel Cell, the more active they will be, which will result in an increase in the amount of energy produced. Therefore, researchers from USP look for ways to improve the project.
Biobattery CCM optimization procedures are now the focus of USP researchers' efforts
There are many aspects that are being analyzed, some of which include the optimization of bioprocesses, the automation of the system, the identification and use of materials for the construction of the chambers that make up the MCC, among others.
The objective is to contribute so that, in the future, CCM can leave the laboratory scale and gain scale to operate in urban sewage treatment plants, in addition to alcohol production plants and industrial effluent treatment stations. In other words, the objective is to make the biobattery more applicable to real-world settings.
