The 660 Gallon Brewery Fuel Cell

An anonymous reader writes "Australia's University of Queensland has secured a $115,000 grant for a 660-gallon fuel cell that should produce 2 kilowatts of power. A prototype has been operating at the university laboratory for three months. This fuel cell type is essentially a battery in which bacteria consume water-soluble brewing waste such as sugar, starch and alcohol, plus in this instance produces clean water."

Comments

Me Homer

[wmwilson01]

Call me Homer Simpson, but all I heard was "beer, beer, beer, Mmmmm beeerrrr".

I think somebody misunderstood the process.

[BSarp]

Alcohol isn't brewing "waste" -- it's the entire point!

Re:I think somebody misunderstood the process.

[dan828]

It sounds like a bunch of grad students got together and convinced someone to fund a brewery that they had rigged up in the basement of the science building. I can just picture a bunch of guys sitting around drinking beer and trying to write a grant proposal. "Oh hell, just tell them it's a fucking fuel cell...."

Good idea

[JanneM]

So it sits on the campus consuming sugar, starches and alcohol. Just like a graduate student then, except you also get some useful output. Should revolutionize academia; just imagine what this device is capable of once it gets tenure.

Re:Good idea

[SurturZ]

I'm glad they've found another use for vegemite.

For those that aren't from Australia, Vegemite is a foodstuff by-product from brewing. It's chief ingredients are yeast, salt and pain.

Bender

[WFFS]

Am I the only one who immediately thought of Bender from Futurama?

Not entirely clean

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that TFA indicates that this is a method to remove brewer's waste, with the byproduct of producing electricity. As a method for producing electricity in general, it is not a clean method because you'd first have to produce alcohol (which would then we cleaned by the bacteria). Producing alcohol produces *VAST* amounts of CO2.

I have worked as an assistant winemaker at a small vinyard. Our vats are 3000 litres apiece. Even with these small vats, the temperature reached by the yeast cell division is HOT to the touch (but not enough for thermal electricity generation). If you were to walk into the room where the vats are without first ventilating the room, you would pass out because the oxygen in your lungs feels like it is literally sucked out (not sure of the actual physical process involved). If no one were around, you would die from asphyxiation. It is wierd sensation, let me tell you.

Re:Not entirely clean

[malsdavis]

Its funny how these days, any "alternative" form of energy is automatically considered by many to be "clean", "green" or "environmentally friendly".

Just for the record: Biofuels are definitely NOT environmentally friendly and Hydro-electric plants are amongst the construction projects most often protested AGAINST on environmental grounds.

Just thought that need to be said.

Re:Not entirely clean

[evwah]

"If no one were around, you would die from asphyxiation. It is wierd sensation, let me tell you."

you have personal experience dying from asphyxiation? that has to be a first

Re:Not entirely clean

[kkerwin]

"If you were to walk into the room where the vats are without first ventilating the room, you would pass out because the oxygen in your lungs feels like it is literally sucked out (not sure of the actual physical process involved)."

Diffusion of oxygen against a concentration gradient. It's basically the same process that happens when you sprinkle salt on a slug and it dies: the salt lowers the water concentration outside of the slug, and water flows out of the slug to balance the water concentrations in and out of the slug.

Partial pressure of oxygen outside of the lungs (pressure produced only by oxygen molecules, nothing else) is much lower than the partial pressure of oxygen inside the lungs. Oxygen flows out of the lungs to equalize the partial pressures. CO2 flows into the lungs to replace the displaced oxygen.

And, you die, just like the slug. :-)

Re:Not entirely clean

[fractoid]

I'm curious how (sustainable) biofuel isn't environmentally friendly? It's carbon neutral, leverages our existing overproduction of food crops, seems all good all round. The only thing I can think of is that it's smelly and bad for your valve seats... obviously logging old growth forest for biomass doesn't count here, just things like maize and grain crops.

Hydro plants are protested against because they flood large areas of wildlife habitats and peoples' homes. That's an 'environmental' issue but not an emissions one.

I agree, though, that jumping on the 'alternative' bandwagon is far too fashionable and often counterconstructive - take, for example, the fact that the Prius uses more fuel than the Golf TDi[1]. Like any other engineering issue (and conservation is one at heart) you have to look at the data and not just follow the emotive hype. For instance, modern nuclear reactor designs are far safer than the old, cold-war era designs, and potentially very fuel efficient. If it weren't for the "nuclear is bad" mindset of the general public, they would be the perfect mid- to long-term energy solution.

[1] Of course, that's not a fair comparison because the TDi runs diesel fuel which has a higher energy density, but I'm pretty sure the total energy cost of a Prius over its lifetime is higher than that of a TDi.

Re:Not entirely clean

[fractoid]

Integral fast reactors consume any transuranic element.

From Wikipedia:

Compared to current light-water reactors with a once-through fuel cycle that uses less than 1% of the energy in the uranium, the IFR has a very efficient (99.5% usage) fuel cycle. The basic scheme used electrolytic separation to remove transuranics and actinides from the wastes and concentrate them. These concentrated fuels were then reformed, on site, into new fuel elements. Non-trans-uranic (sub-uranic? pre-uranic?) waste products are a short term storage proposal only.

Another important benefit of removing the long half-life transuranics from the waste cycle is that the remaining waste becomes a much shorter-term hazard. After the actinides and transuranics are removed from the spent fuel, the remaining waste elements have half lives of a few decades at most. The result is that within 300 years, such wastes are no more radioactive than the ores of natural radioactive elements. In laymans' terms, it can't explode (no high-pressure radioactive coolant), it can't melt down (passive self-limiting design), it doesn't produce long-lived radioactives (any that it does produce it re-burns into short-lived waste). Nuclear looks pretty ideal short-term to me, and with this type of reactor it's good for mid- to long-term too. Solar will be good once solar cells can actually pay for the costs of their own manufacture in less than 20 years.

Re:Just for reference

[ez76]

More importantly, Zima has found a market!

Imagine

[WED Fan]

Imagine a beo...(hic)...a be...(hic)...imagine a...(hic)...imagine...what was I saying?...(hic)...Imagine...John Lennon was the best Beatle.

Re:Just for reference

[fyngyrz]

that's 20 100 watt bulbs

Or 200 10 watt compact florescent bulbs, which is all we use. Not 200 of them, of course. But in a 5000 square foot home, we do have quite a few.

More importantly, that's an average rate, so storage during off hours could yield considerably more output. If you sleep 8 hours of a 24 hour day and aren't home for another 8 while you work, that leaves 8 hours at 6 kilowatts if you control your inactive power consumption decently, and even if you don't, you could still end up with a great deal more than 2KW available to you. Storage also allows for short peak usage (startup of furnace blowers, refrigerator motors, air conditioners and so on... takes a lot more to start most motors than it does to keep them turning, even under load.

I would definitely be willing to make room for a 700 gallon or so tank; I wonder what the feeding, cleaning, and environmental requirements for a production version will be. I've been seriously considering solar, but the high installation cost and the relatively short lifetime of silicon cells (20 years or less) doesn't work out very well. If this thing can run long term and isn't a maintenance nightmare, I'd jump on that puppy instantly.

New Belgium Brewery

[tooyoung]

New Belgium Brewery, most famous for Fat Tire and Sunshine, produce 10% of their electricity using the methane that is produced from bacteria feeding off of their waste water.

Re:I hope it gets better

[fyngyrz]

2 kW isn't that much so maybe for my house I need 6 kW

Do you need 6 kw while you sleep? Do you need 6kw while you're at work? If not, that same system might serve to give you 6kw for 8 hours by storing the other 4 kw generated during the 16 or so hours of low duty time periods. Storage makes all the difference in the world. Some people might actually consume 6kw all the time, but that seems like an awful lot. I don't, and I live in a pretty big home with a whole slew of electronic gear.

Re:It won't be long now...

[Stickerboy]

>I like where you're heading. Perhaps we can tap into those darned gaming machines also. These got to be a heap of excess kinetic energy when you slap those buttons.

>Ditto sex. The three BIG EVILS of the Conservative universe - drinking, gambling and prostitution - could just turn out to be the saviors of the world

In the bedroom:

"Honey, what's that?!?!"

"They call it Sex@Home. We have to do our part to stop global warming..."

Re:Which is not that great for the space..

[M. Baranczak]

The electricity isn't the main point. From the article:

"It's not going to make an enormous amount of power -- its primarily a waste water treatment that has the added benefit of creating electricity,"

Re:Good to feel again

[Bad D.N.A.]

Beer has been saving this planet for thousands of years. Can you imagine if people had to actually deal with their problems?

Thus the profit spake,

[HackingYodel]

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. --Benjamin Franklin.


A man who knew a bit about both beer and electricity. Think he's smiling down from heaven about this, or puzzled it took us so long?

It would give a new meaing to

[Mogster]

the phrase 'drunk with power'