Operational Assessment of a Sediment Microbial Fuel Cell Power Source for Navy-Relevant Sensor Technologies

	Microbial fuel cell test deployment in San Diego Bay.

Sediment-based microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are fueled by organic detritus populations in marine sediment and have the potential to provide continuous remote power that is environmentally sustainable. Sediment MFCs are open and exposed to the marine environment which can affect reliability. In this effort, the operational potential of sediment MFC designs as a power supply for Navy-relevant seafloor sensors was evaluated.

Performance of two basic microbial fuel cell designs powering nodes of a hydrophone array were tested. One type of fuel cell taps the voltage gradient across the marine sediment water interface, maintained by microbial oxidation of organics at an anode in the sediment and reduction of dissolved oxygen at a cathode in the overlying water. The other fuel cell type taps the voltage gradient between microbial oxidation in the sediment at the anode and reduction of manganese oxide, microbially maintained on a metal cathode surface (see Wotawa-Bergen et al., 2010, for details).

The prototypes were tested to power hydrophones that are currently being used to track acoustically-tagged green sea turtles in San Diego Bay.

Capabilties:

• Pier facilities
• Diver support services
• Ocean engineering expertise
• Acoustic tracking systems
• Autonomous monitoring and surveillance systems

Further Information:

• Wotawa-Bergen, A.Q., D.B. Chadwick, K.E. Richter, L.M. Tender, C.E. Reimers, and Y. Gong. 2010. Operational testing of sediment microbial fuel cells in San Diego Bay, OCEANS 2010, Seattle, WA, September 20-23, 2010.
• Richter, K., D.B. Chadwick, and L.M. Tender. 2010. Microbial fuel cell design sufficient to power a hydrophone over a several month period, 217th Electrochemical Society Meeting, Vancouver B.C., April 24-29, 2010.