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SOIL microbial fuel cells TO (2) POWER precise irrigation systems.

Project description

Microbial fuel cell-based technology for clean power

The agricultural industry, particularly smart agriculture, is already a vital player in the global economy and logistics, and its importance is expected to grow. Additionally, agriculture represents a significant domain for introducing and adopting clean solutions. The EU-funded SOIL2POWER project acknowledges the important role of the agricultural sector and aims to develop a novel power-sourcing technology capable of generating clean and stable energy using microbial fuel cells. This technology will leverage controlled electrogenic biofilms, ensuring high-efficiency biobatteries that produce safe, clean, durable and maintenance-free energy. The application of this technology to irrigation systems is anticipated to reduce the need for maintenance or replacement.

Objective

Smart agriculture is determined to play a major role to foster water and energy conservation solutions, and innovation technologies
should be aimed at overcoming current technical, economic, and sustainable barriers. The SOIL2POWER project focuses on
developing a breakthrough power sourcing technology based in Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs), that leverage the natural microbial
metabolism processes using organic matter present at the soil to generate electrical energy. The consortium will build a controlled
electrogenic biofilm formation by immobilization techniques to increase overall biobattery performance, creating a continuous,
clean, safe, and maintenance-free energy supply solution. By facing relevant challenges throughout the project, such as bacterial
behavior, startup time conditions or electrode architecture an innovative biological battery of rapid start-up and stable high-power
supply will be conducted to control irrigation valves without maintenance and replacement.
Feasibility and validation of separate components have been already conducted through lab studies and will be the starting point to
perform a continuous improvement development during the first stages of the project. Afterwards, a prototype will be tested in
simulated environment by the end of year 2. If solution is validated with the whole functions up and running, during year 3
(2024-2025) a complete deployment of marketing and investment strategies will be performed, alongside operational environment
validation to rate real performance based on real feedback from end-users.
SOIL2POWER will contribute and ease the transition to develop novel technological solutions by boosting the innovation in clean
energy solutions industry, strengthening human capital, biotechnological research innovatinos and eventually enabling the adoption
of sustainable energy solutions in agricultural industry, paving the way to a sustainable precise irrigation systems for smart
agriculture.

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2022-TRANSITION-01

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Coordinator

ARKYNE TECHNOLOGIES SL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 523 486,25
Address
CALLE DE LA TECNOLOGIA 17 - EDIFICIO CANADA PLANTA
08840 Barcelona
Spain

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 523 486,25

Participants (4)

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