How the biobattery could create recycling innovations for organic waste

Many people recycle food scraps, lawn clippings, and other carbon-based waste by turning it into compost, either at home, or by putting it in a bin for those communities that include compostable materials for their recycling programs. Biofuel technology, which turns certain materials into biogas or biodiesel, has also become more common. A German innovation called the biobattery, promises to marry the two and provide yet a new method of generating energy that has the happy effect of diverting tons of waste from landfills.

Unlike most biofuel plants, the biobattery can use just about any organic solid waste, including leftover food, lawn clippings, dead leaves, coffee grounds, and even human waste. It processes these materials and produces electricity, heat, bio oil, biogas, and a plant char that is useful as fertilizer.

One can imagine a biobattery changing the way some communities deal with solid waste. A community recycling pickup could take all the organic waste from home and business and convey it to a facility that includes a biobattery. The biobattery provides electricity, generated by the biogas, for the grid. Bio oil would be refined into fuel for aircraft and ships. The plant char would be sold to farms and home gardens as fertilizer.

The current prototype plant, run by the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Energy and Safety Technology, is capable of processing 30 kilograms of biomass per hour. However, researchers are confident that the technology can be expanded to an industrial scale sometime in the near future.