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	    Researching technologies for an energy sustainable water infrastructure



    
        
            	Logan Bioenergy Lab, Sackett Room 128


	
	A cube microbial fuel cell (MFC)


	An array of MFCs


	A two-chamber, thermal regenerative ammonia battery


	Battery electrode deionization


	Graduation of Mim Rahimi and Yaoli Ye


	Logan group Spring 2019


	Logan Labgroup 2012


	On the basketball court (Summer 2018)


	ISMET Conference at Cornell


	ISMET Conference Logan Group


	NCEC Conference Logan group (2017 in Hangzhou)




        

        
    




The main focus of the Logan lab is the development of new renewable energy technologies, such as microbial fuel cells, for achieving an energy sustainable water infrastructure.  Penn State News.
Additional work is underway to better understand the daily energy use in our lives, and how energy is captured and processed. The goal of this work is to develop pathways for energy consumption, and more importantly to shift our energy sources to renewable technologies. Visit the Daily Energy Unit D website.

Also, see some new presentations on daily energy use and water electrolyzers.

 

Current Research Topics

	Bioelectricity using Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) and other applications. [Summary] [MFC website]	Biohydrogen production using Microbial Electrolysis Cells. [Summary] [Website]
	
H2 production by water electrolysis using seawater

(New! Stay tuned). PSU News story. PSU News story.

See also TV newstory
	

Thermally regenerated batteries (TRBs) to generate electricity using low-grade waste heat. [Website]
	Desalination or ammonia recovery using battery electrode deionization	

Reducing fouling of reverse osmosis (RO) desalination membranes


Current funding: Link to all funded projects in the Logan lab.

 Other Recent Research Topics

Membrane bioreactors:  For low-strength wastewaters (<~200 mg/L of COD) hollow fiber membrane bioreactors that contain a high concentration of granular activated carbon (GAC) can be used to effectively treat and filter wastewater. We have worked primarily with anaerobic membrane bioreactors, where the GAC is kept suspended using recirculation, but also with micro-aerobic bioreactors where the GAC is suspended by both air bubbles and recirculation. You can visit the xMBR page for information on these reactors, or more generally on membrane research at Penn State.

Electricity from salinity gradients: The same technologies used for desalination can be modified and used for energy production. We are looking at using a new desalination technology developed in our lab called BDI with solutions of different salinities, such as freshwater and seawater, to produce electricity. There are many different types of salinity gradient energy technologies (SGE), but the ones that are being researched in our laboratory include: BDI, reverse electrodialysis (RED), capacitive mixing cells (CapMix) to extract energy based on electrode capacitance, and concentration flow cell-based (CFC) batteries that use pseudo-capactive electrode reactions to extract energy as electricity.

Past Research Topics

Other research topics in the Logan Lab have included: particle dynamics, such as marine snow formation in the ocean, coagulation processes that produce fractal particles, and bioadhesion/bacterial transport in groundwater and filters; modeling of trickling filters; the development of a simplified measurement of biochemical oxygen demand call the HBOD test; perchlorate remediation; the degradation of pollutants using white rot fungi; and molecular-scale techniques to study particle dynamics and microbial adhesion in engineered and natural systems.

About Bruce Logan

Bruce Logan is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and a Fellow of: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), International Water Association (IWA), the Water Environment Foundation (WEF), and the Association of Environmental Science and Engineering Professors (AEESP). He is a collaborator with KAUST (Saudi Arabia), a former Franqui International Chair at Ghent University (2013, Belgium); and a visiting professor at Newcastle University (UK), Tsinghua University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Dalian University of Technology (China). LOGAN CV- 1-31-21. For citation information: Logan Google scholar- citations.

	
	


     
            
                
            
		
         

		
    

	
	

		
		
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