HUMANITY IS RUNNING ON FULL POWER. FROM INDOOR PLUMBING, TO THE LIGHTS IN OUR
HOUSES, TO OUR CARS, DEVICES WE'RE AN ENERGIZED SOCIETY.
IN A WORLD WHERE PEOPLE LIVE IN FEAR OF RUNNING OUT OF ENERGY, A TEAM OF UNIQUE RESEARCHERS
HAVE FOUND A POTENTIALLY INFINITE POWER SOURCE. MEET DOCTOR LENNY TENDER. HE IS A RESEARCH
CHEMIST AT THE NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY. HE'S THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR BEHIND THE
BENTHIC MICROBIAL FUEL CELL. Benthic microbial fuel cell is a device that
extracts electricity from the sea floor and it's being developed to persistently operate
oceanographic sensors. Nearly all scientific sensors that go into the marine environment
are battery powered. So what the benthic microbial fuel cell does is it actually draws electricity
out of the bottom of the sea floor. That's what benthic means; it's the interface between
the sediment on the bottom of a marine environment and the overlying water. It's able to generate
electricity just like a windmill. It's an energy harvester.
The sediment actually has quite a bit of fuel in it. If you can think of anything that has
ever lived in the marine environment; phytoplankton, sea creatures, etc. When they die they wind
up settling down on the sea floor and it's just like leaves on your lawn. So those creatures,
as they start decomposing , that represents a pretty potent fuel source. Glucose for example.
And that is the geological precursor for petroleum. And it's sort of sitting there mixed into
the sediment on the sea floor. That's a very useful fuel. And by a fuel I mean that this
is something that a microorganism can use to acquire energy from. It's also something
that we can use to acquire energy from to operate marine devices.
FUTURE ENERGY SOURCES COULD COME FROM SOME PRETTY UNLIKELY PLACES.
LIKE WASTE WATER, FOR EXAMPLE. Waste water treatment conventionally requires
a lot of energy. And we're right next door here to a massive waste water treatment facility.
It consumes 36 megawatts of electricity to treat that waste water. But the inherent energy
represented by the organic matter which is the fuel in the waste water can be used to
generate electricity so there's an opportunity to flip that equation upside down and to actually
think of waste water treatment plants as power stations generating power.
AND WHY STOP WITH WASTE WATER? DR. TENDER SAYS THAT THERE'S A POTENTIAL TO TAKE THIS
ENERGY UTILIZER TO THE SKIES. We actually have organisms that we've isolated
from the benthic microbial fuel cell, they're very good at accepting the electrons from
electrodes and reducing carbon dioxide. So now we have to get them to take the reduced
carbon dioxide. So now we have to get them to take the reduced carbon dioxide and make
a fuel. So what does that mean? So you could actually have a large facility that would
essentially suck the carbon dioxide out of the air, and at the end of it you might have
a valve and out would come fuel that you could [use to] operate your car. All the fuel that
we're getting now, you know the petroleum-based fuel we?re pumping out of the ground. And
all the carbon has been sequestered underground and we burn it and we're dumping more carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere. This is an opportunity to start drawing on the carbon dioxide that's
already in the atmosphere and sucking it out and then generating a fuel.
NRL SCIENCE SOLVING THE CHALLENGES OF TOMORROW