Engineering Students Design the First Remote Power Monitoring System for Micorbial Fuel Cells
A team of undergraduate Electrical Engineering students, Omar Alvarez Tinajero and Aaron Marquez, have developed the first remote power monitoring system for Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) (Insights, Fall 2016). The MFCs can extract electrical energy from winery wastewater while bringing the effluent water to a quality sufficient for use in irrigation. To enable more widespread application of MFCs it will be necessary to develop means to continuously monitor and view MFC system operations. The MFCs were designed and constructed by SSU collaborators at the Okinawa Institute for Science and Technology. Maintenance and monitoring of the biological activities of the MFCs is being conducted by the research group of Prof. Michael Cohen in the Department of Biology while the engineering students in Prof. Farahmand's research group have been developing means to remotely control the MFC circuitry and monitor power production. The remote power monitoring system, is expected to be delivered to Okinawa, Japan, in January to be used on larger MFC structures. Omar, a recent engineering graduate, has been offered an internship position at Okinawa to lead the new design. Omar and Aaron will also be presenting their remote power monitoring system at the 3rd Meeting of the North American Branch of the International Society for Microbial Electrochemistry Technology at Stanford on Oct. 5-7.