A Bio-based Fuel Cell System for Rural Energy Generation

Electricity generation accounts for greater than 50% of total U.S. farm emissions. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are expensive and unreliable. The fuel costs incurred by U.S. farms are offset by supplemental assistance from the government. Particularly attractive are bio-based approaches which use enzymes or entire cells to directly convert renewable compounds into electricity. We show that the predicted power production of our system design should be sufficient to warrant employing this approach in the production of large-scale generators.