Lead was widely used in water pipes during the industrial revolution that triggered urbanization and exponential growth of the population in metropolitan centers. The reason for its popularity was the plasticity of the material used in service lines near the end user. The negative health effects have been known since the 1920s, but infrastructure modernization in industrialized countries remains an enormous economic challenge. Lead service lines therefore continue to circulate water in our supply systems. The city of Flint in the northwest of Detroit, for example, received much press attention due to its long struggle with lead poisoning (e.g. Flint Water Crisis). Dissolved lead is highly toxic in a very small concentration and accumulates in body tissues.
The biggest challenge when removing lead from the water cycle is that it is usually dissolved in very low concentrations. Other compounds “mask” the dissolved lead, which makes its removal difficult. Sodium, for instance, is concentrated ten thousand times higher than lead. While nowadays lead can be removed from water by reverse osmosis or distillation, these processes are not selective and thus ineffective. They consume a lot of energy, which in turn is an environmental issue in itself. High energy consumption makes water treatment also very expensive. At the same time, other minerals dissolved ion water are beneficial and therefore desired ingredients that should not be removed.
MIT engineers have developed a much more energy-efficient method to selectively remove lead from water and published their results in the journal ACS EST Water. The new system can remove lead from water in private households or industrial plants and hence from the water cycle. Through its efficiency, it is economically attractive and offers its users the clear advantage of not being poisoned.
The method is the most recent of a number of development steps. The researchers started with desalination systems and later developed it into radioactive decontamination method. With lead the engineers have found an attractive market. It is the first system that is also suitable for private households. The new approach uses a process that was named shock electrodialysis by the MIT engineers. It is essentially very similar to electrodialysis as we know it, as charged ions migrate into an electric field through the electrolyte. As a result, ions are enriched on one side while being depleted on the other.
The difference of the new method is that the electric field moves as a sort of shock wave through the electrolyte and drags dissolved ions along. The shock wave traverses from one side to the other is the voltage increases. The process leads to a lead reduction of 95%. Today, similar methods are also used to clean up aquifers or soil contaminated by solvents. In principle, the shock wave makes the process much cheaper than existing processes because the electrical energy is targeted to remove specifically lead while leaving other minerals in the water. Hence, a lot less energy is consumed.
As usual for bench top prototypes, shock electrodialysis is still too ineffective to be economically viable. Its up-scaling will take time. But the strong interest of potential users will certainly accelerate its industrialization. For a household whose water supply is contaminated by lead, the system could be placed in the basement and slowly clean the water carried by the supply pipes because high rates occur only during peak hours. For this purpose, a water reservoir is necessary, keeping a stock of purified water. This can be a fast and cheap solution for communities such as Flint.
The process could also be adapted for some industrial purposes. The mining and oil industries produce much heavily contaminated wastewater. One imagine to reclaim dissolved metals and sell them to the market. This would create economic an incentives for wastewater treatment. However, a direct comparison with currently existing methods is difficult because the longevity of the developed system is yet to be demonstrated.
At Frontis Energy we are thrilled by the idea of creating economic incentives to help implementing environmentally friendly processes and are already looking forward to a commercial product.
In wastewater treatment, aeration is an energy-intensive but necessary process to remove contaminants. Pumps blow air into the wastewater to supply the microbes in the treatment tank with oxygen. In return, these bacteria oxidize organic substances to CO2 and hence remove them from the wastewater. This process is the industrial standard and has proven itself for over a century. If the researchers at Washington State University and the University of Idaho have their way, that is changing now.
In their project, the researchers used a unique microbial fuel cell system they developed to replace aeration. Their novel wastewater treatment system cleans wastewater with the help of microorganisms that produce electricity. These microbes are called electrophiles.
The work should one day lead to less dependence on the energy-intensive treatment processes. Most of the energy in such processes is consumed in the activated sludge and its disposal. The energy consumption in water treatment produces around 4-5% of anthropogenic CO2 worldwide. to put that in perspective, according to the Air Transport Action Group in Geneva, international air transport produced 2.1% CO2 in 2019. The researchers published their work in the journal Bioelectrochemistry. In addition to cutting green house gas emissions, lowering the energy consumption of wastewater treatment would save billions in annual operation and maintenance costs.
Microbial fuel cells allow microbes to convert chemical energy into electricity, much like in a battery. In wastewater treatment, a microbial fuel cell can replace aeration while capturing electrons from wastewater organics. These electrons themselves are in turn a waste product of the microbial metabolism. All living organisms strive to discharge their excess electrons. This process is known as respiration or fermentation. The electricity generated the microbes can be used for useful applications in the wastewater treatment plant itself. The technology kills two birds with one stone. On the one hand, the treatment of the wastewater saves energy. On the other hand, it also generates electricity.
Up until now, microbial fuel cells have been used experimentally in wastewater treatment systems under ideal conditions, but under real and changing conditions they often fail. Microbial fuel cells lack regulation that controls the potential of anodes and cathodes and thus the cell potential. This can easily lead lead to a system failure. The entire cell must then be replaced.
To tackle this problem, the researchers added an additional reference electrode to the system that enables them to control their fuel cell. The system becomes more flexible. It can either work as a microbial fuel cell on its own and consume no energy, or it can be converted so that less energy is used for aeration while it purifies the wastewater more intensively. Frontis Energy uses a similar control system for its electrolysis reactors.
The system was operated for one year without major issues in the laboratory as well as a pilot in a wastewater treatment plant in Idaho. It removed contaminants at rates comparable to those in a classic aeration tanks. In addition, the microbial fuel cell could possibly be used completely independent of grid power. The researchers hope that one day it could be used in small wastewater treatment plants, such as cleaning livestock farms or in remote areas.
Despite the progress, there are still challenges to be overcome. They are complex systems that are difficult to build. At Frontis Energy we specialize in such systems and can help with piloting and commercialization.
Biochar is a coal-like substance that is mainly made from agricultural waste products. It can remove contaminants such as pharmaceuticals from treated wastewater. This is the result of research carried out by scientists of the Pennsylvania State University and the Arid Lands Agricultural Research Center in Arizona. The biochar was made from two agricultural residues common in the US: cotton and guayule.
To test the ability of biochar to adsorb pharmaceuticals from treated wastewater, the scientists compared three common compounds. During adsorption, a material like a pharmaceutical adheres to the surface of solid biochar particles. In the case of absorption, in turn, one material is taken up into another, such as in a sponge.
The shrub guayule grows in the dry southwestern US and its waste was used for the biochar tested. Among bonatics, it is also called Parthenium argentatum. The shrub is cultivated as a source of rubber and latex. The plant is chopped to the ground and its branches crushed to extract the latex. The dry, mushy, fibrous residue that remains after the stalks are chopped up to extract the latex is called bagasse.
The results are important as they demonstrate the potential of biochar made from abundant agricultural waste. If it wasn’t re-used, this waste would have to be disposed at a cost. The production of biochar is an inexpensive additional processing step to reduce contamination in treated wastewater used for irrigation.
At the same time, most wastewater treatment plants are currently not equipped to remove emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals. If these toxic compounds were removed by biochar, the wastewater could be reprocessed in irrigation systems. This re-use is crucial in regions where water scarcity is a constraint for agricultural production.
The pharmaceutical compounds used in the study were: sulfapyridine, an antibacterial drug commonly used in veterinary medicine; docusate, a widely used laxative and stool softener, and erythromycin, an antibiotic used to treat infections and acne.
The results, published in the journal Biochar, suggest that biochar can effectively adsorb agricultural waste. The biochar obtained from cotton processing waste was a lot more efficient. It adsorbed 98% of the docusate, 74% of the erythromycin and 70% of the sulfapyridine from aqueous solutions. In comparison, the biochar obtained from guayule residues bagasse adsorbed 50% of the docusate, 50% of the erythromycin and only 5% of the sulfapyridine.
Research found that a temperature rise from about 340°C to about 700°C in the oxygen-free pyrolysis process used to convert agricultural waste materials to biochar resulted in a improved capacity for adsorption.
To date, there have been no studies on the use of guayule bagasse to make biochar and remove contaminants, nor are there any for cotton processing waste. Some research has been carried out into the possible removal of other contaminants. However, this is the first study to use cotton gin waste specifically to remove pharmaceuticals from water.
The research is more than theoretical. At Frontis Energy we hope that the technology will soon be available on industrial scale. With cotton gin waste being widespread even in the poorest regions, we believe this source of biochar holds great promise for decontaminating water. The next step would be to develop a mixture of biochar material to adsorb a wider variety of contaminants from water.
Separating liquid compartments is not only important for generating energy in biological cells, respiration that is, but also for electrochemical cells and desalination through reverse osmosis and other processes. Therefore, scientists and engineers intensively research this field. We have already reported in several posts about promising attempts to make membranes cheaper and more effective. New nanomaterials have also been developed.
As a result of climatic changes caused by global warming, water scarcity is increasingly becoming a problem in many parts of the world. Settlements by the sea can secure their supply by desalinating water from seawater and brackish water sources. The process, however, is very energy intensive.
Now, researchers at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed artificial pores made of carbon nanotubes that remove salt from water so efficiently that they are comparable to already available commercial desalination membranes. These tiny pores are only 0.8 nanometers in diameter. A human hair with a diameter of 60,000 nm. The researchers published the results in the journal Science Advances.
The predominant technology used to remove salt from water is reverse osmosis. A thin-film composite membrane (TCM) is used to separate water from ions. Hitherto the performance of these membranes has, however, been unsatisfactory. There is, for example, always a tradeoff between permeability and selectivity. In addition, exisiting membranes often show insufficient ion repulsion and are contaminated by traces of impurities. This requires additional cleaning stages, which again increase energy costs.
As is so often the case, the researchers got inspired by nature. Biological water channels, also known as aquaporins, are a great model for the structures that can improve performance. These aquaporins have extremely narrow internal pores that compress the water. This enables extremely high water permeability with transport rates of more than 1 billion water molecules per second per pore. Due to the low friction on the inner surfaces, carbon nanotubes represent one of the most promising approaches for artificial water channels.
The research group developed nanotube porins that insert themselves into artificial biomembranes. These engineered water channels simulate the functionality of aquaporin channels. The researchers measured the water and ion transport through their artificial porins. Computer simulations and experiments using the artificial porins in lipid membranes showed improved flux and strong ion repulsion in the channels of carbon nanotubes.
This measurement method can be used to determine the exact value of the water-salt permselectivity in such narrow carbon nanotubes. Atomic simulations provide a detailed molecular view of the novel channels. At Frontis Energy, we are excited about this promising approach and hope to see a commercial product soon.
Life cycle analyzes of vehicles with different drive concepts are the subject of many studies. When it comes to CO2 emissions, the energy source is crucial. Two main developments are discussed today: the electrification of the propulsion system (i.e. fully and partially electrified vehicles) and the electrification of fuels (i.e. hydrogen and synthetic fuels).
In the manufacture of synthetic fuels, water is broken down into oxygen and hydrogen by electrolysis with renewable electricity. Due to the temporary oversupply of renewable electricity, this energy is particularly cheap. The hydrogen can then be used in hydrogen vehicles propelled by fuel cells. Alternatively, CO2 can be converted into hydrocarbons with hydrogen and then used in conventional combustion engines in a climate-neutral manner. The advantage of fuel cell vehicles is their high efficiency and the low cost of electrolysis. The disadvantage is the lack of a hydrogen infrastructure. Converting from hydrocarbons to hydrogen would cost trillions. The cheaper alternative would be synthetic hydrocarbons. However, the development is still in its infancy and the production of synthetic fuels cannot yet be carried out on a large scale.
Hydrogen and synthetic fuels are a necessary addition to electromobility, especially for long-distance and load transport. The widespread view that the low level of efficiency of internal combustion engines makes these fuels uninteresting ignores the possibility of using them to store and transport energy and to enable climate neutrality for air and shipping traffic. If you compare the CO2 emissions from electric motors and electrified fuels, it becomes clear that these mainly depend on the CO2 pollution of the electricity used.
Synthetic fuel sources
The production of synthetic fuel requires renewable electricity, water and CO2. The technical processes are known. However, the first large-scale industrial plants are only in the planning phase. However, pilot projects such as that of the Canadian company Carbon Engineering have shown the technical feasibility of scaling. The generation costs depend mainly on the size of the plant and the electricity price, which results from the local conditions, the structure of the electricity market and the share of renewable electricity.
The decentralized production of these fuels brings not only climate neutrality but also geopolitical gains. Since CO2 and renewable energy – in contrast to lithium – are generally accessible resources, users of this technology become independent of energy imports. At Frontis Energy we think these are strong arguments in favor of synthetic fuels.
Forests are vital to our society. In the EU, forests make up around 38% of the total land area. They are important carbon sinks as they eliminate around 10% of EU greenhouse gases. Efforts to conserve them are a key part of EU climate targets. However, the increasing demand for forest products poses challenges for sustainable forest management.
According to a report recently published in the renowned science magazine Nature, the EU’s deforested area has increased by 49% and with it the loss of biomass (69%). This is due to large-scale deforestation, which reduces the continent’s carbon absorption capacity and accelerates climate change.
The analyzed a series of very detailed satellite data. The authors of the report show that deforestation occurred primarily on the Iberian Peninsula, the Baltic States, and Scandinavia. Deforestation of forest areas increased by 49% between 2016 and 2018. Satellite images also show that the average area of harvested land across Europe has increased by 34 percent, with potential implications for biodiversity, soil erosion and water regulation.
The accelerating deforestation could thwart the EU’s strategy to combat climate change, which aims in particular to protect forests in the coming years, the experts warn in their study. For this reason, the increasing use of forests is challenging to maintain the existing balance between the demand for wood and the need to preserve these key ecosystems for the environment. Typically, industries such as bioenergy or the paper industry are the driving forces behind deforestation.
The greatest acceleration in deforestation was recorded in Sweden and Finland. In these two countries, more than 50% of the increase in deforestation in Europe has been recorded. Next in line are Spain, Poland, France, Latvia, Portugal and Estonia, which together account for six to 30% of the increase, the study said.
Experts suggest linking deforestation and carbon emissions in model calculations before setting new climate targets. The increase in forest harvest is the result of the recent expansion of global wood markets, as evidenced by economic indicators for forestry, timber bioenergy and international trade. If such a high forest harvest continues, the EU’s vision of forest-based mitigation after 2020 could be compromised. The additional carbon losses from forests would require additional emission reductions in other sectors to achieve climate neutrality.
At Frontis Energy, we find the competition between bioenergy and this important carbon sink particularly disturbing, as both are strategies to mitigate global warming.
An abandoned or unproductive oilfield can be reused for methane production from CO2 using renewable electrical power. Exhausted oilfields can be reactors for the conversion of renewable energy to natural gas using microbes. To achieve this, an oilfield can be made electrically conductive and catalytically active to produce natural gas from renewable power sources. The use of natural gas is superior to any battery because of the existing infrastructure, the use in combustion engines, the high energy density and because it can be recycled from CO2. Oilfields are superior to any on-ground production because of the enormous storage capacities. They are already well explored and these geological formations underwent environmental risk assessments. Lastly, the microbial power-to-gas technology is already available.
Process summary
Whole process (end-to-end via methane)
50% electrical efficiency
Energy density of methane
180 kWh kg−1
Storage capacity per oilfield
3 GWh day−1
Charge/Discharge cycles
Unlimited
Investment (electrodes, for high densities)
$51,000 MW−1
Cost per kWh (>5,000 hours anode lifetime)
<$0.01 kWh−1
Electrolyte
Seawater
The Problem
To address the problem of storing renewable energy, batteries have been proposed as a possible solution. Lithium ion batteries have a maximum energy storage capacity of 0.3 kWh kg−1. To date, this is considered the best trade-off between cost and efficiency but these batteries are still too inefficient to replace gasoline, which has a capacity of about 13 kWh kg−1. This makes battery driven cars heavier than conventional cars. Lithium air batteries are considered a possible alternative because they can reach theoretical capacities of 12 kWh kg−1 but technical difficulties have prevented them from being used for transportation.
In contrast, methane has an energy density of 52 MJ kg−1 corresponding to 180 kWh kg−1 which is second only to hydrogen with 500 kWh kg−1, not counting in nuclear energy. This high energy density of methane and other hydrocarbons along with their facile usage, is the reason why they are used in combustion and jet engines that drive nearly all transportation to date. While electrical cars seem to be a tempting green alternative, the fact that combustion engines and the fueling infrastructure are so wide-spread makes it difficult to switch.
In addition to the difficulty of changing habits, battery-driven electrical cars need other limited natural resources such as lithium. To equip all 94 million automobiles produced worldwide in 2017, 3 mega tons lithium carbonate would need to be mined annually. This is nearly 10% of the entire recoverable lithium resources of 35 mega tons worldwide. Although lithium and other metals can be recycled, it is clear that metal based batteries alone will not build the bridge between green energy and traditional ways of transportation due to the low energy densities of metals. And this does not even take into account other energy demands such as industrial nitrogen fixation, aviation or heating.
For Germany, with its high proportion of renewable energy, fuel for cars is not the only problem. As renewable energy is generated in the north, but many energy consumers are in the south, the grid capacity is frequently reached during peak production hours. A steadier energy output can only be accomplished by decentralizing the production or by energy storage. To decentralize production, homeowners were encouraged to equip their property with solar panels or windmills. As tax incentives phase out, homeowners face the problem of energy storage. The best product for this group of customers so far are again lithium ion batteries but investment costs of $0.10 kWh−1 are still unattractive especially because these products store the energy as electricity which can only be used for a short time and is less efficient than natural gas when used for heating.
Natural gas is widely used as energy source today and the global energy infrastructure is designed for natural gas and other fossil fuels. Increasing demand and limited resources for these fossil fuels were the main drivers of oil and gas prices during the last years, slowed by the recent economic crises and hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The high oil price attracted investors to recover oil using techniques that become increasingly expensive and are environmental risks such as deep-sea drilling or tar sand extraction. Ironically, the high oil price made costly renewable energies an economically feasible alternative and helped driving down their cost. Since habits are difficult to change and building an entirely new infrastructure only for renewable energies does not seem economically feasible today while CO2 drives global warming, a more realistic solution needs to be found.
Microbial Power-to-Gas could be a bridging technology that integrates renewable energy into the existing fossil fuel infrastructure. It reaches break even in less than 2 years if certain preconditions are met. This is accomplished by integrating methane produced from renewable energy into the current oil and gas producing infrastructure. The principal idea is to use carbon instead of metals as energy carrier because of its high energy density when bound to hydrogen. The benefits are:
High energy density of 180 kWh kg−1 methane
Low investments due to existing infrastructure (natural gas, oilfield equipment)
Carbon is not a limited resource
Low CO2 footprint due to CO2 recycling
Methane is a transportation fuel
Methane is the energy carrier for the Haber-Bosch process
Inexpensive catalysts further reduce initial investments
Low temperatures due to bio-catalysis
No toxic compounds used
No additional environmental burden because existing oilfields are reused
The solution
Methane can be synthesized by microbes or chemically. Naturally, methane is produced by anaerobic (oxygen-free) microbial biomass decomposition. The energy for biomass synthesis is provided by sunlight or chemical energy like hydrogen. In the case of methanogens (methane producing microbes), energy is harvested after CO2 and hydrogen were released from biomass decomposition following a 1-to-4 stoichiometry:
CO2 + 4 H2 → CH4 + 2 H2O
Without microbes, methane is produced by the Nobel-prize winning Sabatier reaction and several attempts are currently underway to use it on industrial scale. It is necessary to split water into hydrogen and use this to reduce CO2 in the gas phase. A major drawback of the Sabatier reaction is the need for high temperatures around 385ºC, and a nickel catalyst that becomes quickly spent. Methanogens use iron-nickel enzymes called hydrogenases to harvest energy from hydrogen, but do so at ambient temperatures.
Power-to-Gas concept for exhausted oilfields. Electrolysis catalyzes water splitting inside the oilfield producing methane gas and O2.
The future challenge will be to accelerate methane production rates as has been reported for a high temperature oilfield cultures. Besides increasing the temperature, the most obvious solution is to use a higher reactive surface and bringing both electrodes closer together. Using carbon brushes that are poor hydrogen catalysts but provide a higher surface for microbial attachment is one possibility. Methane production correlates with microbial cell numbers in the reactors.
The number of methanogens in microbial electrolysis reactors correlates with the electrode surface.
To overcome the problem of expensive carbon (and also steel) brushes for large scale applications,exhausted gas and oilfields could be used. They provide a high surface area and are usually economic liabilities and not assets. Methanogens inhabit oilfields where they carry out the final step in anaerobic petroleum degradation. Hence, oilfields can be seen as bioreactors at geological scale. Geological formations provide ideal conditions for producing, storing and extracting methane.
Open questions and potential solutions
Oilfield porespace volume
The Californian Summerland oilfield, for instance, has been abandoned and extensively studied in the past. It produced 27 billion barrels of oil and 2.8 billion m3 methane during its lifetime of 90 years. This maximum load of 3.5 billion m3 left the same volume of porespace filled with seawater behind. Only 2% of these pores are larger than 50 µm, which is necessary for microbial growth assuming dimensions of 1 x 2 µm of a methanogen cell. Experiments showed that the resulting 70 million m3 accessible porespace have a storage capacity of 35,000 TW. That is a lot of methane assuming a solubility of 0.74 kg methane m−3 seawater at 500 m water depth. All German off-shore windfarms together have a capacity of 7,000 MW. Obviously, the limiting factor is not the volumetric storage capacity of an oilfield.
Microbial methane production rates
But how fast can microbes produce methane in an hypothetical oilfield? Under optimal conditions, methanogens that grow on electrodes (typically the genus Methanobacterium or Methanobrevibacter) can produce methane at a rate of 100-200 nmol ml−1 day−1 (equals 2.24-4.48 ml l−1 day−1) depending on catalyst and potential. Using a production rate of 15 J ml−1 day−1 of methane (190 nmol ml−1 day−1), the entire microbially accessible oilfield (2%) has a capacity of 3.6 million MBtu per year. Microbes would theoretically consume 1 TWh per year for 3.6 million MBtu methane production if there were no losses and electrical power is translated into methane 1-to-1. A power generator of 121 MW would be sufficient to supply the entire oilfield at these rates. However, all German off-shore windfarms produce 7,000 MW meaning that only 3% off-peak power can be captured by our example oilfield. Therefore, the catalytic surface and activity must be increased to accelerate methane conversion rates.
Since methanogens produce methane from hydrogen, not only the 2% porespace big enough for cells can be used resulting in an increased catalytic surface to nearly 60%. A hydrogen catalyst needs to be found that does not out-pace methanogen growth to keep the reservoir pH within the limits of 6-8 required for methanogen growth. This hydrogen catalyst must be cheap and render an oilfield electrically conductive. A chemical formulation that mimics microbial hydrogen catalysis could be used. It has the potential to turn a non-conductive and non-catalytic oilfield into a conductive hydrogen catalyst sufficient to sustain methane production needed to store all of Germany’s electricity produced by off-shore windfarms. This catalyst is soluble in water when inactive. To become active, it coats mineral surfaces by precipitation that can be triggered by indigenous microbes or by electrical polarization. The investment would be $2.3 million per MW storage capacity ($16 billion for the entire 7,000 MW). Due to microbial growth, the catalytic activity of the system improves during operation and there is no need for the second component if an immediate production is not crucial. The investments made on the cathode side would then be as low as $600 per MW ($4.2 million for 7,000 MW).
Anodes
As the cathodic side of the reaction can be excluded as limiting factor, the anode needs to be designed. Several commercially available anodes such as mixed metal oxides (up to 750 A m−2) with platinum on carbon black or niobium anodes (Pt/C, 5-10 kA m−2) could be used. Anodes based on platinum are the most cost-efficient material available on the market. Investments made for Pt/C (10%, 6 mg cm−2) anodes will amount to $50,000 per MW ($350 million for 7,000 MW). However, the exact amount of Pt needed for the reaction still needs to be evaluated in an experiment because the corrosion rate at 2 V cell voltage is unknown. An often cited value for the lifetime of fuel cells is 5,000 hours and is used here to determine the costs per kWh. For 5,000 hours lifetime, the costs per kWh will be at the targeted limit of $0.01 but may be well below that because Pt/C anodes can be recycled and the Pt load may be reduced to 3 mg cm−2 (5%). Alternatively, steel anodes (SS316, 2.5 kA m−2, $54,000 per MW) can be used but it is unclear when steel anodes fail to electrolyze. In conclusion, the anodic side is the cost-driving factor. Hopefully, better water splitting anodes will lower these costs in future.
Cost estimation summary
Windfarms
Already in place
CO2 injection
Already occurred
Natural gas capturing equipment
Already in place
Microbial seed
Wastewater from oil rig
Cathode costs
$600 MW−1
Anode costs
$50,000 MW−1
Electrolyte (seawater)
Free
Total (>5,000 hours anode lifespan)
<$0.01 kWh−1
Energy and conversion efficiencies
The whole cell voltage for microbial power-to-gas reactions varies from 0.6 to 2.0 V, depending on cathodic rates, anodic corrosion and the presence of a membrane. Higher voltages will accelerate anode corrosion, again, making anodes the limiting factor. As the voltage decreases, methane production rates become slower but also more efficient. The voltage also depends on the pH of the oilfield. An oilfield that underwent CO2 injection as enhanced recovery method will have a low pH, providing better conditions for hydrogen production but not for microbial growth and must be neutralized using seawater. As stated above, the oilfield, being the cathode, is not limiting the the system. The use of Pt/C anodes eliminates the overpotential problem on the anode side. Hence, we can assume an ideal system that splits water at 1.23 V. However, the voltage is often 2 V due to anode and cathode overpotentials. Optimized cultures and cathodes produce about 190 nmol ml−1 day−1 methane which equals 0.15 J ml−1 day−1 using the energy of combustion of 0.8 MJ mol−1. The same electrolysis cell consumes 0.2 mW at a cell voltage of 2 V which equals 0.17 J ml−1 day−1 and the resulting energy efficiency is 91%. The anodes can be simple carbon brushes and the two chambers of the cell are separated by a Nafion™ membrane. The system can still be optimized by using Pt/C anodes and by avoiding membranes.
The overall electricity-methane-electricity efficiency also depends on the consumption side efficiency where methane is used in combustion engines and gas fired power plants. Such power plants frequently operate at efficiencies of 40- 60%. Assuming a reasonable power efficiency of 80% (see above), the overall electrical power recovery using gas fired power plants will be up to 50%. Besides the high efficiency of gas fired power plants, they are also easy to build and therefore contribute the a better power grid efficiency. Coal fired power plants can be upgraded to gas fired power plants.
Experimental approach
The conversion efficiencies of charge (Coulombs) transported across the circuit are usually between 70-100% in these systems depending on the electrode material. Another efficiency limitation could arise from mass transport inhibition. Mass transport can be improved by pumping electrolyte adding more costs for pumping which still have to be determined. However, since most oilfields undergo seawater injection for enhanced oil recovery the additional cost may be negligible. The total efficiency has yet to be determined in scale-up experiments and will depend on the factors mentioned above.
The reactor simulates oilfield conditions using sand as filling material under continuous flow of electrolyte.
Controlling the pH is crucial. Alkaline pHs significantly impede hydrogen production and therefore methanogenesis. This can be addressed by a software that monitors the pH and adjusts the potential accordingly. Addition of acids is not desired as this drives the costs. The software can also act as potentiostat that then fully controls the methane production process. To test the process under more realistic conditions, a drill core from an oilfield must be obtained.
Results show methane production in the simulation reactor. The appearance of methane in the anode compartment was a result of flow from the cathode to the anode, carrying produced methane with it.
Return of investment of the microbial power-to-gas process
The the microbial power-to-gas process in unproductive oilfields is economically superior to all other storage strategies because of the low start-up and operating costs. This is achieved because the major investments are the installation of oil- and gas production equipment and renewable power plants which are already in place as a precondition. These investments break even in a short amount of time.
But how can the microbial Power-to-Gas process accelerate the return of investment in renewable energy? Only 8 out of 28 active off-shore windfarms reported their investment costs. These 8 produce roughly half the overall power of 1,600 MW corresponding to $7 billion. While the maximum production of an oilfield with unlimited supply of electricity would yield hypothetical 3.6 million MBtu natural gas per year resulting a return of $13 million per year the real production is limited by off-peak power generated by renewable energy production. Assuming that the maximum annual methane production corresponds to 10% excess electrical power, $15 million per year can by generated by selling 4.3 million MBtu methane per year on the market. These are $15 million that are not lost during off-peak shutdowns. Clearly, this conservative estimate can help to compensate the investment in renewable energy earlier. It also decreases the investment risk because the investment calculations for new wind farms can be made on a more reliable basis.
In the example using all German windfarms (7,000 MW) this compensation roughly doubles. Using the $60 million generated by methane sales per year, the investment of $4 million for the cathodic catalyst and the $36 million for the Pt/C anodes are compensated for within less than a year. No other investments are required because the target oilfield already produced oil and gas and all necessary installation are in working condition. The target oilfield is swept using seawater as secondary extraction method. Electrical installations are in place for cathodic protection of production equipment in order to prevent microbial corrosion, which, however, may need to be upgraded to pass the now higher power densities. Moreover, CO2 is used from CO2 injection as tertiary enhanced oil recovery method. Only the pH may then need to be adjusted to sustain life by sweeping with seawater.
And this is not the end of oilfield storage capacity. In theory, an oilfield can store the entire amount of renewable energy produced in one year globally, allowing more than enough head room for future development and CO2 sequestration.
In addition to well-established Nafion™ membranes which are currently the best trade-off between high-performance and cost in proton exchange fuel cells (PEM), methanol fuel cells, electrolysis cells etc. As our energy resources are diversifying, there is a growing demand for efficient and selective ion-transport membranes for energy storage devices such as flow batteries.
A Sumitomo Electric flow battery for energy storage of a solar PV plant. (Photo: Sumitomo Electric Co.)
Redox flow batteries – the energy storage breakthrough
The high demand for a reliable and cost-effective energy storage systems is reflected in the increased diversity of technologies for energy storage. Among different electrochemical storage systems, one of the most promising candidates are redox-flow batteries (RFBs). They could meet large-scale energy storage requirements scoring in high efficiency, low scale-up cost, long charge/discharge cycle life, and independent energy storage and power generation capacity.
Since this technology is still young, the development of commercially and economically viable systems demands:
improvement of the core components e.g. membranes with special properties,
improvement of energy efficiency
reduction in overall cost system.
Meeting demands for redox flow batteries
Two research teams in the United Kingdom, one from Imperial College and the other from the University of Cambridge, pursued a new approach to design the next generation of microporous membrane materials for the redox-flow batteries. They recently published their data in the well renown journal Nature Materials. Well-defined narrow microporous channels together with hydrophilic functionality of the membranes enable fast transport of salt ions and high selectivity towards small organic molecules. The new membrane architecture is particularly valuable for aqueous organic flow batteries enabling high energy efficiency and high capacity retention. Importantly, the membranes have been prepared using roll-to-roll technology and mesoporous polyacrylonitrile low-cost support. Hence, these innovative membranes could be cost effective.
As the authors reported, the challenge for the new generation RFBs is development of low-cost hydrocarbon-based polymer membranes that features precise selectivity between ions and organic redox-active molecules. In addition, ion transport in these membranes depends on a formation of the interconnected water channels via microphase separation, which is considered a complex and difficult-to-control process on molecular level.
The new synthesis concept of ion-selective membranes is based on hydrophilic polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) that enable fast ion transport and high molecular selectivity. The structural diversity of PIMs can be controlled by monomer choice, polymerization reaction and post-synthetic modification, which further optimize these membranes for RFBs.
Two types of hydrophilic PIM have been developed and tested: PIMs derived from Tröger’s base and dibenzodioxin-based PIMs with hydrophilic and ionizable amidoxime groups.
The authors consider their approach innovative because of
The application of PIMs to obtain rigid and contorted polymer chains resulting in sub-nanometre-sized cavities in microporous membranes;
The introduction of hydrophilic functional groups forming interconnected water channels to optimize hydrophilicity and ion conductivity;
The processing of the solution to produce a membrane of submicrometre thickness. This further reduces ion transport resistance and membrane production costs.
Ionic conductivity has been evaluated by the real-time experimental observations of water and ion uptake. The results suggest that water adsorption in the confined three-dimensional interconnected micropores leads to the formation of water-facilitated ionic channels, enabling fast transport of water and ions.
The selective ionic and molecular transport in PIM membranes was analyzed using concentration-driven dialysis diffusion tests. It was confirmed that new design of membranes effectively block large redox active molecules while enabling fast ion transport, which is crucial for the operation of organic RFBs.
In addition, long-term chemical stability, good electrochemical, thermal stability and good mechanical strength of the hydrophilic PIM membranes have been demonstrated.
Finally, it has been reported that the performance and stability tests of RFBs based on the new membranes, as well as of ion permeation rate and selectivity, are comparable to the performances based on a Nafion™ membranes as benchmark.
There has been criticism directed towards the Netherlands for the progress made. According to projections in their 2009 National Renewable Energy Action Plan, the Netherlands should have reached nearly 20% renewable electricity in 2014. This lackluster progress prompted a statement from the EU Commission in its 2017 Second Report on the State of the Energy Union, where the EU Commission stated the Netherlands were the only member state to not exhibit average renewable energy shares which were equal or higher than their corresponding action plan trajectories in 2013/2014.
The EU Commission also stated that the Netherlands was one of the three countries (others: France, Luxembourg) with the biggest efforts required to fill 2020 targets.
Existing Energy Storage Facilities
To date, the Netherlands has almost 20 MW of energy storage capacity either operating (14 MW), contracted (1 MW), or under construction (4 MW).
All energy storage facilities in the Netherlands are electro-chemical, with the exception of the contracted 1 MW Hydrostar underwater compressed air energy storage project in Aruba (Caribbean). Hydrostar is a Canadian company specializing in underwater compressed air energy storage technologies.
The vast majority of the 20 MW of installed energy storage capacity in the Netherlands is spread over just three facilities: the Netherlands Advancion Energy Storage Array (10 MW Li-ion), the Amsterdam ArenA (4 MW Li-ion), and the Bonaire Wind-Diesel Hybrid project (3 MW Ni-Cad battery).
The Netherlands Advancion Energy Storage Array was commissioned in late 2015 and provides 10 MWh of storage to Dutch transmission system operator TenneT. The project, which represents 50% of all Dutch energy storage capacity, provides frequency regulation by using power stored in its batteries to respond to grid imbalances.
The 4 MW Amsterdam ArenA lithium-ion project was commissioned 2017 for PV integration and back up power purposes. The 3 MW Bonaire Wind-Diesel Hybrid project is a battery array located on the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire and used as a buffer between intermittent wind energy and the diesel-generation stations on the island.
The remaining 3 MW of Dutch energy storage projects are spread over 21 sub-100 kW facilities, mainly geared towards electric vehicle (EV) charging. Mistergreen, a leading developer of EV charging stations in the Netherlands has constructed 750 kW of LI-ion energy storage arrays at its various electric vehicle charging stations.
Energy Storage Market Outlook
Gearing up for significant market growth for electric vehicles in the Netherlands, there has been a considerable amount of effort to expand the country’s network of quick charging stations. This trend will have to continue in order meet the demand for the 1-million electric vehicles expected in the Netherlands by 2025, so one could expect that there will be large growth in the sub-100 kW Li-ion stations that have already started popping up around the country.
There is little information available regarding the need for large-scale energy storage but the overall need is likely low due to the low penetration of renewables in the electricity sector. However, there is significant focus on energy efficient/independent/self-sufficient housing.
Like Italians, the Dutch are very accustomed to using natural gas in their homes. This, coupled with the push for energy self-sufficient housing could present a unique market for residential power-to-gas systems in the Netherlands.
In our previous blog posts we have discussed resource recovery from waste related to the wastewater treatment and showed improved and enforced regulations have a positive impact on water quality and public health. Now we show that clever catalytic processes can be used to extract valuable commodities from waste agricultural products.
Low-cost waste biomass can serves as renewable source to produce a sustainable alternative to fossil carbon resources in order to meet the need for the environmentally friendly energy. For example, the C2 and C4 ethers derived from carboxylic acids obtained from biomass are promising fuel candidates. It has been reported, that when using ethers biofuel parameters such as ignition quality and sooting have significantly improved compared to commercial petrodiesel (>86% yield sooting index reduction). Ignition quality (cetane number) was improved by more than 56%.
The scientists from National Renewable Energy Laboratory, together with their colleagues from Yale University, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on a joint project with the goal of co-optimization of fuels and engines. The research focuses on improving fuel economy and vehicle performance while at the same time reducing emissions through identification of blendstock derived from biomass.
In their recent article, published in the renown journal PNAS, a novel molecule, 4-butoxyheptane, has been isolated in a high-yielding catalytic process from lignocellulosic biomass. Due to its high oxygen content, this advantageous blendstock can improve the performance of diesel fuel by reducing the intrinsic sooting tendency of the fuel upon burning.
The research team has reported a “fuel-property-first” approach in order to accelerate the development process of producing suitable oxygenate diesel blendstocks.
This rational approach is based on following steps:
Fuel Property Characterization – includes mapping and identification of accessible oxygenates products; predicting fuel properties of those products a priori by computationally screening
Production process – development of the conversion pathway starting from biomass. Includes continuous, solvent-free synthesis process based on a metal/acid catalyst on a liter-scale production of the chosen compound
Testing and analysis – with the goal to validate and compare fuel property measurements against predictions
Fuel properties of target oxygenates that have been investigated are related to the health- and safety- aspects such as flash point, biodegradation potential, and toxicity/water solubility, as well as market and environmental aspects such as ignition quality (cetane number), viscosity, lower heating value and sooting potential reduction with oxygenated blendstocks. As a result, 4-butoxyheptane, looked as the most promising molecule to blend with and improve traditional diesel. It has been shown, that the fuel property measurements largely agreed with predictive estimations, validating accuracy of the a priori approach for blendstock selection.
The mixture at 20-30% blend of 4-butoxyheptane molecule into diesel fuel has been suggested as favorable. The improvement in autoignition quality as well as significant reduction of yield sooting index from 215 to 173 (20% reduction) demonstrates that the incorporation of this molecule could improve diesel emission properties without sacrificing performance. In terms of flammability, toxicity, and storage stability, the oxygenate fuel has been evaluated to be at low-risk.
Life-cycle analysis show that this mixture could be cost-competitive and have the potential in significant greenhouse gas reductions (by 50 to 271%) in comparison to petrodiesel.
As research is a perpetual process, more of it is necessary and should include testing of the bioblendstock in an actual engine and production of the biofuel in an integrated process directly from biomass.
