Current wastewater treatment methods consume significant amounts of costly energy, and the efforts to recover energy during treatment have severe limitations. As a result, there is a demand for an integrated system that can simultaneously remove contaminants and produce bioenergy. The proposed technology has the potential to meet this demand by taking advantage of two biological methods: 1) Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) oxidization of organic compounds to generate bioelectricity; and 2) algal bioreactors removing nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) to produce biomass that can be further converted to biodiesel. The project is based on a successful proof-of-concept of the proposed system in the laboratory. The team will assess the commercial viability of the technology through business and engineering development. Successful completion of the project will result in better understanding of key factors needed to determine the technical and commercial feasibility of the proposed technology, and help to further engage strategic industrial partners.
The proposed technology has economic benefits, including decreased energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuels (coal), and societal benefits including decreased greenhouse gas emissions from energy production and improved water quality. Potential customers for this technology such as publicly-owned water treatment plants, engineering consulting firms, and environmental equipment companies, will help bring the proposed system to market, and will profit from new business opportunities in system design and construction (consulting and equipment), and in reduced operating expenses.
Current wastewater treatment methods consume extensive amounts of costly energy, and the efforts to recover energy during treatment have significant limitations. As a result, there is a great demand for an integrated system that can simultaneously remove contaminants and produce bioenergy. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as an emerging concept hold great promise to be an energy-efficient approach for wastewater treatment. By taking advantage of microbial activities, MFCs are capable of producing electric energy directly from wastewater. However, the potential of commercializing MFC technology is still unclear, and especially, the value propositions of this technology have not been correctly identified. In this I-Corps project, the team has advanced scientific and technological understanding of MFC technology and explored the potential of commercializing MFCs through entrepreneurship training, extensive customer discovery/interview, and development of business ecosystem. The value propositions of MFC technology have been modified according to the feedback from customer interview and the improved understanding of the technical aspects by the team members. The identified value propositions include low energy consumption, low sludge production, and bioenergy recovery. These are significantly different from the previous opinion that energy production is the major benefit of MFC technology. The new value propositions are critical to identifying suitable application niche for MFCs. For example, low energy consumption determines that aeration must be eliminated and greatly reduced in MFC application. Those value propositions also indicate that the primary function of MFCs is wastewater treatment, instead of energy recovery. All those findings will help to properly allocate limited resource to further develop MFC technology. The customer discovery has revealed a strong interest in this technology from a broader audience including the end users such as publicly owned water treatment plants and industries that generate wastewater, engineering consulting firms, and environmental equipment companies, environmental department of the government and research institutes. The pathway of technology commercialization can start from university research and successful demonstration in a transitional stage, and then a strategic partnership with water technology companies will be necessary to take the risk of early-stage development, provide financial and/or technical support to help bring the prototype to demonstration scale, and have a sale network.
