Modeling electrical particle thermal energy storage systems for long-duration, grid-electricity storage applications
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Gifford, Jeffrey (ORCID:0000000259090325)↗
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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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Pragmatic protocols for working cleanly when measuring ice nucleating particles
We report that measuring ice nucleating particles (INPs) is critical for understanding, and modeling, cloud formation, reflectivity, and precipitation patterns. However, because INPs are very rare in the atmosphere, but abundant—sometimes alarmingly so—in the dust that covers all work surfaces, contamination during processing of collected aerosol samples can be a significant hindrance to obtaining accurate measures of INPs. In preparing this technical note, we questioned the cleanliness of every collection and processing step involved in making immersion freezing measurements of INPs re-suspended from filter samples. The aim was to identify, and then minimize, all potential sources of significant contamination, including containers and tools used to store filters and prepare liquid suspensions, gloves, work surfaces, and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) trays commonly used for sample analysis. While plasticware released few INPs, most gloves readily shed them, but this can be mitigated by using washed cleanroom vinyl or polyethylene gloves. Work surfaces, even those that had been cleaned, were prodigious reservoirs of contaminating INPs, but simply covering them with aluminum foil will provide an INP-free surface. By applying these practices, we developed a method to reduce the background level of INPs on Nuclepore™ polycarbonate filters in our tests to 0 at -25 °C and < 20 at -27 °C, making them suitable for use in all sampling environments.
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
Modeling the 4D discharge of lithium-ion batteries with a multiscale time-dependent deep learning framework
The lithium-ion battery (LIB) field is moving towards the direction of investigating spatially resolved physical phenomena in the 3D porous microstructure of electrodes. These pore-scale simulations give new insights into the local dynamics of lithiation/de-lithiation and charge transport, Nevertheless, the computational time of these simulations limits the integration of these models in optimization workflows of cycling conditions or electrode manufacturing processes. Machine learning models present a way of assessing in real-time the performance of materials. While several successful techniques for replicating simulations with machine learning have been proposed, this case study presents a more demanding problem, due to the necessity of understanding the behavior of heterogeneous 3D local data, as it evolves in time: this poses both a scientific and a technical challenge. To this end, we propose an autoregressive multiscale convolutional neural network model to predict relevant quantities at the pore-scale in the solid phase: the lithium concentration (in the active material) and potential (in the active material and carbon binder). Here, these are ultimately used to reconstruct the battery discharge curve. 3D images of the electrode microstructures are the input to the network, trained with a dataset of finite element method simulations to predict the discharge behavior of the cathode side in lithium ion batteries. We propose this machine learning model as a proof-of-concept of the applicability of multiscale networks for time-dependent physics problems. The trained model exhibits very high accuracy (with errors lower than 2 %) in forecasting the discharge behavior of new unseen cathodes.
25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
Advanced nuclear reactor integration opportunities for the pulp and paper industry in the U.S. context: Technical perspectives, gap analysis, and preliminary technoeconomic assessment
Pulp and paper (P&P) manufacturing requires a large amount of low-pressure (LP) steam to digest, wash wood fibers and dry pulp into paper. Most of the LP steam is extracted from backpressure turbines that produce power from high-pressure (HP) steam. This HP steam is generated from burning wood waste material; bark is burned in hog boilers, and lignin is boiled in a black liquor recovery boiler. In a typical integrated P&P mill, 50–100% of the steam is produced from these sources, while additional steam is produced in natural gas (NG), fuel oil, or coal boilers. The other energy-intensive process in the plant is the chemical-recovery section (e.g., lime kiln), which requires high-temperature processing from NG combustion to retrieve and recirculate spent chemicals. This paper assesses the energy and heat demand and material balances of a typical generic kraft pulp mill, along with the nuclear heat, steam, and power integration opportunities to replace conventional combustion systems. The paper also addresses steam and electricity generation through a comprehensive technical and engineering gap analysis of five different nuclear-integration opportunities and their process economics, thus enabling the lignin and bark to be further processed into biobased chemicals or fuels, as well as the potential to reduce overall emissions from kraft pulping. Preliminary findings have shown that the P&P industry could achieve technological benefits by integrating their current manufacturing process with small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs) on a national level. This research aims to set the path forward for a cleaner and more resilient P&P industry.
Advanced nuclear reactor↗
Science Applications of Phased Array Radars
Phased array radars (PARs) are a promising observing technology, at the cusp of being available to the broader meteorological community. PARs offer near instantaneous sampling of the atmosphere with flexible beam forming, multi-functionality, low operational and maintenance costs, and without mechanical inertia limitations. These PAR features are transformative compared to those offered by our current reflector-based meteorological radars. The integration of PARs into meteorological research has the potential to revolutionize the way we observe the atmosphere. The rate of adoption of PARs in research will depend on many factors including i) the need to continue educating the scientific community on the full technical capabilities and trade-offs of PARs through an engaging dialogue with the science and engineering communities and ii) the need to communicate the breadth of scientific bottlenecks that PARs can overcome in atmospheric measurements and the new research avenues that are now possible using PARs in concert with other measurement systems. The former is the subject of a companion article that focuses on PAR technology while the latter is the objective here.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Mapping ammonia-diesel combustion on a single-cylinder 107 mm bore diesel engine retrofitted for ammonia port-fuel injection
Ammonia is garnering significant interest from the international maritime sector as an alternative fuel. It is attractive as a hydrogen carrier and as a fuel because it has a higher volumetric energy density compared with gaseous or liquid hydrogen, making it easier to store and transport without requiring high pressures or cryogenic storage. Ammonia has significant toxicity concerns, but safe handling procedures have already been established because it is one of the most widely produced chemicals worldwide for use as a fertilizer. Barriers to consuming NH 3 as a fuel in engines include (1) less favorable ignition energy and flame speed compared with conventional fuels; (2) emissions challenges, including potentially high NH 3 , NO X , and N 2 O emissions; and (3) fuel delivery and handling challenges. Although NH 3 has been used to fuel compression-ignition marine engines in limited demonstration projects, technical barriers still exist. The use of NH 3 as a fuel in smaller-bore, high-speed auxiliary engines for large vessels and for smaller inland and coastal marine applications remains unaddressed. This work investigates a late-injection diesel pilot ignition dual-fuel NH 3 strategy using a single-cylinder, high-speed Cummins four-stroke diesel engine platform with a 107 mm bore and 1.1 L displacement per cylinder. The engine was modified for port fuel injection of heated gaseous anhydrous NH 3 . The diesel fuel injection system and the combustion geometry were unmodified to represent a retrofit application, which would minimize additional hardware to maximize diesel fuel displacement with NH 3 . Furthermore, the results show the applicability of a late injection diesel pilot strategy to overcome the challenging fuel properties of NH 3 over the engine operating envelope. Mapping results focusing on emissions are presented, and comparisons are made to a conventional diesel combustion baseline.
Ship engines↗
Solid Waste Release Calculations for the Composite Analysis Baseline Assessment
The purpose of the Hanford Site Composite Analysis (CA) is to provide an estimate of the cumulative radiological impacts from active and planned low-level radioactive waste disposals and other potentially interacting radioactive waste disposal sources that will remain following Hanford Site closure. The need for a waste form release model addressing multiple solid waste forms is documented in CP-60410, Hanford Site Composite Analysis Technical Approach Description: Waste Form Release.
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
Major Power Rivalry and Nuclear Risk Reduction: Perspectives From Russia, China, and the United States
Since its founding in 1992, the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) has had an abiding interest in nuclear threat reduction. In the 1990s it did some of the leading thinking about cooperative threat reduction with post-Soviet entities. In the early 2000s it focused increasingly on strengthening the nonproliferation regime. Since 2015 one of its primary interests has been exploring the future of cooperative strategies to reduce nuclear/strategic dangers. That future faces many challenges, both technical and geopolitical. By 2020, a rising sense of urgency of nuclear danger had clearly taken shape in the United States and internationally, driven in significant measure by the renewal of major power rivalry and potential military flashpoints among those powers. And that urgency has driven a rising national and international exploration of what can be done to reduce nuclear dangers.
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
High operating temperature heat transfer fluids for solar thermal power generation. Final report
This is the final technical report for the DOE MURI project on developing high-operating temperature heat transfer fluids for solar thermal power generation. This project aimed to evaluate liquid metals as a heat-transport fluid and potential energy storage medium for concentrated solar powered (CSP) systems. The project consisted of five phases, starting with fluid selection and screen and ending with potential CSP integration. The initial fluid selection arrived at heavy liquid metals as candidate fluids such as lead bismuth eutectic (LBE) as the prime liquid-alloy candidate to be studied, given the conditions above. Fifty-seven liquid compositions were initially identified with liquidus temperatures lower than 200°C, composed of elements that provide no driving force to the reduction of Cr 2 O 3 or Al 2 O 3 passivation layers in pipe material which is required for corrosion prevention. LBE was identified as the primary candidate fluid after these compositions were compared against computational thermodynamic modeling to screen all of the selected systems that would be compatible with our design objectives. Twenty-eight of these compositions were also investigated with the rapid characterization methods; the accuracies of the liquidus temperature and the specific heats predicted by the computations were better than 3 percent and 9 percent, respectively. We conducted numerus corrosion tests of various Fe-Cr-Al based steels in LBE and its variants at temperate as high as 800°C. It was found that minor additions to the liquid did not provide sufficient corrosion protection to warrant their use in real applications. Furthermore, we investigated the detailed mechanism of corrosion between heavy liquid metal and the pipe material at these very high temperatures. A liquid metal loop was constructed to operate at these high temperatures. The loop construction and operation lead to valuable lessons learned that will be needed for industrial scale loops. Furthermore, we learned that electromagnetic pumps at these extreme temperatures will have to be reengineered and redesigned to be used for CSP applications.
14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
Spin-Coherent Transport under Strong Spin-Orbit Interaction (Final Technical Report)
The major goals of the project consisted of acquiring insight in spin-dependent quantum coherent electronic transport phenomena arising from spin-orbit interaction, via experiments on semiconductor heterostructures and thin film semimetals patterned into mesoscopic and nanoscale geometries. The solid-state physics findings contain insight potentially useful for the creation of new quantum states of matter, for spin operations in quantum information processing, for future spin electronics, and for other future functionalities of power-saving electronic devices. The subject was of fundamental interest, but was also of long-term applied interest for quantum devices, spintronics devices, and general electronic devices. The experiments were conducted by low-temperature electronic magnetotransport in nanoscale structures of length scales similar to the quantum phase- and spin-coherence lengths and the carrier mean-free paths in the materials. Emphasis was placed on quantum coherence and spin coherence, to understand coherent spin-dependent electronic processes, on transport of electrons with very long mean-free path (ballistic transport), on the transfer of electron spin to nuclear spin (dynamic nuclear spin polarization in bismuth), and on the study of materials with quantum states emerging from spin-orbit interaction and electron-electron interaction (bismuth iridates). In two-dimensional electron systems in quantum wells of the narrow-bandgap semiconductors InAs and InGaAs the objectives included the characterization of quantum states arising from the Aharonov-Casher quantum-mechanical phase as an electromagnetic dual of the Aharonov-Bohm phase. Objectives also included quantum electronic transport at the mesoscopic scale on the semimetal bismuth in thin film form, and particularly on its strongly spin-orbit coupled surface states. An almost-strain-free method was developed to grow high-quality bismuth thin films. Devices fabricated on these films were then used to study a novel nuclear spin torque, whereby the bismuth carrier spin was transferred to the bismuth nuclei by the agency of both spin-orbit interaction and hyperfine interaction. Aspects of ballistic transport were studied in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures of very high mobility, and a hitherto unsuspected similarity was discovered between ballistic transport and hydrodynamic transport, of potential use in future power-saving electronic devices.
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
Assessment of Enhanced Oil Recovery Using Carbon Dioxide in Michigan Basin Silurian Pinnacle Reefs
The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) has incorporated the work of geologic research teams (Geoteams) in its regional characterization, project planning and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) injection implementation work since the partnership was established by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2003. Over this 16-year period, the cohort of Geoteams has grown from five to ten states and has contributed to the characterization of geologic sequestration opportunities, refinement of reservoir and seal data, and supported injection efforts through both predictive and post-injection assessments. The Michigan team at Western Michigan University has provided technical analysis and support of the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in the Northern Michigan Silurian Pinnacle reefs. With Core Energy, LLC as the industry partner, this project has assessed the potential for EOR in known fields in the Michigan Pinnacle reefs and the capacity for CO2 storage in the reef reservoirs as they are depleted and after reservoir abandonment. This project managed by Core Energy, LLC, involves the only commercial CO 2 Enhanced Oil Recovery floods within the MRCSP region. The Silurian pinnacle reef trend shows significant potential for CO 2 -EOR: this play is relatively new, with approximately 60% of the wells in the largest Niagaran fields still accessible. Most wells have modern logs and there are many cores, core analyses, pressure tests and produced water analyses available for study from these fields. These carbonate reservoirs in Michigan have produced sufficient oil to warrant evaluation for additional recovery efforts. The role of the Michigan team was to collect and analyze all relevant data about reservoir properties, including lithologic and depositional characteristics of the reservoir formations and porosity and fluid flow properties through different compartments in the reservoir. The team has also developed models that represent the geological and physical characteristics of the reservoir and seal system.
01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
GT Flex: A Coordinated Multi-Building Pilot Study
Buildings are a significant and untapped resource for providing utility electric grid services. Recent studies have estimated that buildings could reduce the peak demand on the electric grid in the U.S. by almost 25% through effective combinations of energy efficiency (EE) measures and load flexibility strategies (Langevin et al. 2021). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has established a goal to triple energy efficiency and demand flexibility in both residential and commercial sections by 2030 compared to 2020 levels (Satchwell et al. 2021). Such findings place buildings alongside electric vehicles, photovoltaics, electric batteries, and other distributed energy resources (DERs) as primary technologies needed for supporting high renewable energy generation grids. Coordinating and optimizing multiple buildings and other DERs is more beneficial and valuable when compared with individual buildings and DERs operating as siloed resources, uncoordinated with others (Olgyay et al. 2020). A pilot study at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) was conducted to evaluate value propositions of a multi-building scale project seeking carbon reduction, energy efficiency and grid-interactive capabilities, by demonstrating the means by which stakeholders can determine the technical and financial merits of grid-interactivity and energy efficiency technologies coordinated across multiple assets. The study focused on analyzing technical feasibility of deploying thermal load flexibility strategies at the multi-building scale, coordinated to not exceed existing infrastructure constraints at the pilot site. Results show that campus can provide 3-3.5 MW of potential load shed over a 4-hour event window through coordinated dispatch of thermal cooling load flexibility without exceeding existing infrastructure capacities. Under future high renewable scenarios, this thermal flexibility resource is also valuable when coordinated to reduce curtailment of intermittent renewables. Economic analyses were performed to effectively communicate various value propositions of grid-interactive and efficient building (GEB) thermal flexibility strategies. Load flexibility presents a financial value proposition to the campus today. By conducting rationalized, coordinated dispatch in response to real time price (RTP) fluctuations, the campus can benefit materially from daily price arbitrage. The RTP signal acts as an aggregating mechanism between the utility and customer to call on demand flexibility resources, with a large portion of the benefit deriving from a relatively small number of days. Realizing and maximizing this benefit with thermal load flexibility requires careful attention to the timing of pricing signals and parameterization of dispatch to overcome efficiency penalties. Grid value and signals are expected to evolve over time, and thermal load flexibility shows potential to adapt dispatch logic to support intermittent renewable generation.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Theranostic Radiopnictogens: 71 As, 72 As, and 119 Sb (Final Technical Report)
This project has developed new methods for the cyclotron production of medically relevant radionuclides 71 As and 119 Sb. Arsenic and antimony are chemically homologous elements (group 5A, also known as the pnictogens) that have radionuclides that are of considerable interest within nuclear medicine. Such radiopnictogens include the potentially therapeutic radionuclides 119 Sb (t 1/2 = 38 h) that decays with the emission of 24.5 low energy, high potency electrons per decay with little concomitant photon radiation and 77 As (t 1/2 = 39 h) that decays with average beta energy of 230 keV and diagnostic nuclides 71 As (t 1/2 = 65 h, 28% β+) and 72 As (t 1/2 = 26 h, 80% β+) for positron emission tomography (PET). This work has had major success developing new methods for the cyclotron production and radiochemical isolation of 71 As, supporting parallel developments for 119 Sb, and assessing the chemical similarities between these two homologous radionuclides. This project brought into collaboration two universities with complimentary skill sets, proficiencies, expertise, and facilities: the University of Wisconsin (UWisc) and the University of Missouri (Mizzou). Professors Ellison and Engle have experience in the small cyclotron production and radiochemical isolation of radionuclides, including 72 As and 119 Sb. Their recently developed metallurgic methods for fabricating cyclotron targets have great potential to expand and allow for the biomedical cyclotron production of long- lived, lower positron energy 71 As. Professors Hennkens and Jurisson have significant experience in the reactor production, radiochemical isolation, and biological functionalization of radioarsenic. Recent development of trithiol-based chelator molecules for functionalizing radioarsenic provide a platform for the investigation of the fundamental challenges of the promising low-energy-electron emitter, 119 Sb. Through their positions within their respective University’s graduate schools, the PIs and Co-Is effectively trained of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in nuclear and radiochemistry, sub-specialties specifically identified in the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Isotope Program long-range plan. Annual laboratory research visits for students between UWisc and Mizzou provided essential broad-field experience and scientific networking that is critical for maintaining their path along the training pipeline to productive careers in isotope production. This research collaboration has provided significant benefits to the DOE University Isotope Network and radionuclide-using researchers around the country.
07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
Advanced Energy Approaches for Mixed-Use Developments in the Front Range Urban Corridor
The primary objective of the document is to present example technical approaches and strategies that planners and developers can reference for all-electric mixed-use developments in the Rocky Mountain Front Range urban corridor that are considering advanced energy performance goals such as high levels of energy efficiency and renewable integration. The strategies are tailored toward the vision for a zero energy, all-electric, district thermal system-connected starter district. In this example, on-site solar generation is emphasized as a strategy that can be combined with electrical and thermal energy storage for enhanced community resilience and demand flexibility. Opportunities for utilizing or adapting these strategies include: sharing with vertical developers for potential integration of strategies into vertical design guidelines; incorporation into Owner Project Requirements (OPRs); providing example strategies to design teams as a starting point for design; informing structure of agenda for a building design charrette; comparing building designs to example strategies at various points in the design process to evaluate design progression. While the technical strategies outlined in this document can help inform the development of guidelines for projects in the Front Range urban corridor, this document does not set requirements for any rating, certification, program, or policy.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Fabricated ecosystem workshop: bridging laboratory to field science. Workshop report.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists held a workshop at the DOE BER Genomic Sciences PI meeting on the use of Fabricated Ecosystems in Washington D.C. on February 25th, 2020. Ecosystem fabrication is an approach to creating controlled microbial, soil and plant ecologies within a laboratory setting that enable discovery and dissection of environmental variables, activities, and interactions. At Berkeley Lab, we are developing two systems which span spatial and temporal scales — the EcoFAB and the EcoPOD. The participants of the workshop discussed the potential applications and challenges of using fabricated ecosystems as tools to tackle BER-relevant scientific questions. Specifically, they identified (1) research challenges that would benefit from ready access to this infrastructure (2) identified and prioritized technical challenges that currently limit these systems and (3) discussed how to use them to bridge the gap between lab and field research. To ensure that the fabricated ecosystems , in particular the larger-scale EcoPODs, are of use to as much of the BER community as possible, the workshop participants made the following recommendations: 1. Produce publicly available datasets for a set of control variables. Use for benchmarking, and assessing reproducibility between systems. 2. Implement data standards. 3. Develop/leverage nano/micro sensors and in situ root imaging. 4. Encourage the development of interdisciplinary teams to develop EcoPOD experiments. 5. Develop fabricated ecosystems with size and complexity that sits between the EcoFAB and EcoPOD to accelerate use and access.
42 ENGINEERING↗
Rapidly Deployable Acoustic Monitoring and Localization System Based on a Low-Cost Wave Buoy Platform
The primary objective of this project is to develop a cost-effective, fit-for-purpose environmental monitoring system, “NoiseSpotter®,” that characterizes, classifies, and provides accurate location information for anthropogenic and natural sounds in near real-time. NoiseSpotter was developed to support the evaluation of potential acoustic effects of marine energy (ME) projects. By utilizing a compact array of three acoustic particle motion sensors, NoiseSpotter triangulates individual bearings to provide sound source localization to within 5% accuracy, allowing the ability to discern ME device sounds relative to other confounding sounds in the environment, while providing location estimates to nearby marine mammals for environmental mitigation purposes. The ME industry needs proven solutions to meet environmental impact assessment needs. The NoiseSpotter® includes off-the-shelf, modular components that are easy to assemble and disassemble. Its acoustic particle motion sensors are commercially available and the data logger and real-time telemetry system is designed to be plug-and-play. The entire system is relatively compact and can be deployed from small vessels. NoiseSpotter’s near real-time capability enables operational monitoring of ME sounds, particularly during early stages of technology adoption to facilitate mitigation of potential noise effects. Widespread adoption of the technology for acoustic monitoring of ME devices requires that it be cost effective; hence the anticipated commercial cost of system hardware is $35,000. This project contributes to reducing barriers to ME testing through support of scientific research focused on reducing or mitigating environmental risks and lowering costs and complexity of environmental monitoring. This project has developed an acoustic monitoring system, NoiseSpotter® (U.S. Patent No. 11,156,734 and U.S. Registered Trademark No. 6,442,313), to detect and characterize baseline noise and sounds from ME operations and support geolocation of detected sounds. The intended outcome of the project is to mitigate concerns about the potential for ME device noise to alter marine mammal or fish behavior. NoiseSpotter® enables cost-effective, near real-time acoustic monitoring of an operational ME device relative to ambient environmental noise and provides a technical basis for ME developers seeking to navigate the permitting process in an efficient manner.
16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
A spatially regularized detector for emergent/re-emergent disease outbreaks
Early detection of outbreaks caused by emergent pathogens, using epidemiological surveillance data i.e., daily case counts, is difficult. This is because the data tend to be noisy during the early epoch of the outbreak. In contrast, the spread-rate of the disease tends to be well-behaved, as it depends only on the mixing patterns of the population and the characteristics of the pathogen, neither of which behave erratically in space-time. In this report, we explore whether the spread-rate can be used for epidemiological surveillance, conditional on case count data. Estimating the spread-rate from case count data allows us to exploit exogenous information, e.g., incubation period distributions etc., which can considerably smooth out any erratic temporal behavior. Further, epidemiological dynamics are spatially correlated, and if case counts are available for multiple areal units e.g., counties, these correlations could potentially be used to suppress noise in the early epoch data. These exogenous information and structure are not exploited by conventional syndromic surveillance detectors to extract a well-behaved latent variable for monitoring purposes. The technical challenge lies in the estimation of the spread-rate field jointly over a collection of areal units; further, the spread-rate varies over time. We develop a method based on mean-field variational inference to approximately estimate the spread-rate field, using a Gaussian Random Field Model for spatial regularization. The method is tested on the estimation of spread-rate in the thirty-three counties of New Mexico and detect the arrival of the Fall 2020 COVID-19 wave in September 2020. We find that the method is scalable, but underestimates the uncertainty in the estimated spread-rate field. We detect the arrival of the Fall 2020 wave a week ahead of conventional syndromic surveillance algorithms, but our simplistic detection algorithm, based on simple anomaly detection, suffers from a high false positive rate, similar to conventional detectors.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Fueling the Future: The Emergence of Self-Powered Enzymatic Biofuel Cell Biosensors
Self-powered biosensors are innovative devices that can detect and analyze biological or chemical substances without the need for an external power source. These biosensors can convert energy from the surrounding environment or the analyte itself into electrical signals for sensing and data transmission. The self-powered nature of these biosensors offers several advantages, such as portability, autonomy, and reduced waste generation from disposable batteries. They find applications in various fields, including healthcare, environmental monitoring, food safety, and wearable devices. While self-powered biosensors are a promising technology, there are still challenges to address, such as improving energy efficiency, sensitivity, and stability to make them more practical and widely adopted. This review article focuses on exploring the evolving trends in self-powered biosensor design, outlining potential advantages and limitations. With a focal point on enzymatic biofuel cell power generation, this article describes various sensing mechanisms that employ the analyte as substrate or fuel for the biocatalyst’s ability to generate current. Technical aspects of biofuel cells are also examined. Research and development in the field of self-powered biosensors is ongoing, and this review describes promising areas for further exploration within the field, identifying underexplored areas that could benefit from further investigation.
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗