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