Renewable Energy: Solar, Wind, and… Gas?
May 19, 2009 at 11:05 am Ryan Jones 1 comment
From the always interesting Wired magazine blog comes news of a Penn State researcher’s innovative approach to solving a major problem of renewable energy: storage. Dr. Bruce E. Logan, the Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, is leading research into bioenergy production, specifically into the idea of bacteria producing storable energy that can be converted into electricity. In case I haven’t made clear why this is interesting, I’ll let the folks at Wired explain:
How can tiny bug farts solve our energy problems? It turns out that when a large collection of single celled organisms (known as a culture) containing mainly Methanobacterium palustre live on the positive electrode of a battery, they use the plentiful supply of electrons to convert carbon dioxide into methane. The methane produced can be collected and stored and when further juice is required by the grid, it can be burned to produce electricity… Who would have thought the collective breaking of wind of billions of bugs could be so useful?
Turns out the idea of microbial energy generation isn’t exactly new — Logan’s work with fuel cells was written up in Wired five years ago — but this latest research is all the more reason to be hopeful about a tiny solution to a huge problem.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Entry filed under: College of Engineering, Faculty research, Penn State in the news, University Park campus. Tags: BioEnergy Research, Bruce Logan, Wired magazine.
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