Sweet Energy? Sugarcane Juice Generates Electricity! Technology Discovered by Researchers Uses Plant to Produce Sustainable Electricity

Written by Roberta Souza

Published on 20/06/2024 at 21:30

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Sugarcane Juice Drives Sustainable Electricity Generation and May Become a Great Ally for Sustainability

Researchers from the Institute of Energy and Nuclear Research (Ipen), linked to USP, have discovered an innovative technique: the use of sugarcane juice to generate electricity in fuel cells. This method not only avoids the formation of harmful waste, such as vinasse, but can also be scaled up to industrial levels, according to the engineering website Engenharia Hoje.

Operation of Fuel Cells

Almir Oliveira Neto, coordinator of the research on sugarcane, explains that the fuel cell operates like a battery, using fuel to generate electricity. The cell has two electrodes: the anode (oxidation of the fuel) and the cathode (reduction of oxygen). A membrane between the electrodes acts as an electrolyte, conducting electricity.

In the developed device, the oxidation of sugarcane juice occurs at the anode and the reduction of oxygen at the cathode. The absence of hazardous waste, such as vinasse, makes the process environmentally friendly. The electricity generated can be directed towards the production of higher value-added products, such as gluconic, saccharic, lactic, levulinic, and furfural acids, with applications in the food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and polymer industries.

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Learn More Details About Electricity Production from Sugarcane

Scalability of the Technology

The prototype showed that it is possible to scale up in the laboratory. To work with larger quantities of sugarcane juice and obtain more electricity, it will be necessary to increase the area of the electrodes and develop the technology for a larger scale. Public and private resources will be essential to realize the use of the device on an industrial scale.

The study involved researchers Bruno Villardi, Júlio Nadenha, Victória Maia, Priscila Zambiazi, and Rodrigo Souza, all from Ipen and the Nuclear Technology and Materials Program at USP. The supervision was by Almir Oliveira Neto, with co-guidance from Rodrigo Souza. The results were published in the Virtual Journal of Chemistry and SugarTech, demonstrating the electrocatalytic performance of different metal compositions for the generation of energy from sugarcane juice.

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Eustaquio

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04/07/2024 14:38

Parabéns à equipe do Almir e Rodrigo

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Sweet Energy? Sugarcane Juice Generates Electricity! Technology Discovered by Researchers Uses Plant to Produce Sustainable Electricity

Sugarcane Juice Drives Sustainable Electricity Generation and May Become a Great Ally for Sustainability

Operation of Fuel Cells

Learn More Details About Electricity Production from Sugarcane

Scalability of the Technology

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Sweet Energy? Sugarcane Juice Generates Electricity! Technology Discovered by Researchers Uses Plant to Produce Sustainable Electricity

Sugarcane Juice Drives Sustainable Electricity Generation and May Become a Great Ally for Sustainability

Operation of Fuel Cells

Learn More Details About Electricity Production from Sugarcane

Scalability of the Technology

A giant printer called the “Ferrari” of concrete has landed in Latin America and can already build a 120-square-meter house in just 48 hours, making the traditional construction site look like something from the last century.

Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt has ceased to be a climatic phenomenon and has become a biological system that feeds on itself, with 8,000 kilometers in length, 37 million tons of algae, and scientists confirm that it is now permanent.

Brazil will harvest a record crop of up to 357 million tons of grains, but it does not have the capacity to store a large part of it. The storage deficit has reached the highest level in history and is equivalent to almost the entire production of Argentina.

She started by collecting oyster shells from restaurants and today she has already accumulated more than 10 tons to restore reefs, recover coastal habitats, and demonstrate how a common waste can become a tool for ocean conservation.

Scientists have discovered that the Earth recycles its own continents in the depths, dragging pieces of crust down during plate collisions and returning them later as magma, in a mechanism called relamination that has helped build the continents for billions of years.

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