BLUE PROGRAM OVERVIEW

The BioLogical Undersea Energy (BLUE) program seeks to develop power supplies that capture and convert microscopic forms of marine biomass, such as dissolved organic matter, phytoplankton, bacteria, and microscopic zooplankton, into electrical power. The goal of this program is to develop self-refueling power supplies that enable remote, ocean-deployed, sensor systems, including seabed-mounted sensor and profiling systems, to operate far longer than possible by comparably-sized battery packs. Currently, batteries are the most deployable technology; thus, nearly all ocean-deployed sensor systems are designed and operated within the constraints of battery-based energy budgets resulting in limited capabilities and/or endurance.

Key to successful BLUE efforts is formation of multi-disciplinary teams for (1) identification of microscopic input materials (forms of marine biomass and/or other substances) that can be utilized to generate electrical power; (2) identification of marine environments in which the input materials to be utilized are sufficiently abundant to enable power generation at the target metrics; (3) leveraging biology to develop an integrated process that performs the conversion of input materials to electrical power; (4) development of strategies for the capture and mass transport through the proposed process of the input material which may, for example, rely on surrounding water current; (5) identification of key environmental parameters such as oxygen concentration, temperature, ionic strength, etc., that may affect the proposed process for conversion to electrical power; (6) development of strategies that enable extrapolation with high confidence to one year of continuous power generation in a real marine environment without degradation in performance or needing to be serviced or supplied with consumables; and (7) completion of a comprehensive ecological and environmental impact analysis of the types of input materials proposed to be used and their method of capture and process of conversion to electrical power. 

Teams will also need to incorporate oceanographic/ocean engineering principles into: the capture and conversion strategies; the design of an experimental test bed that replicates relevant features of a representative marine environment, or use of real marine environment that enables efficient design-build-test iteration; and ensuring prototypes can operate in a real marine environment during the end-of-phase technology field demonstrations. 

Upon completion, BLUE will demonstrate a novel, persistent, sustainable, low-environmental impact power supply that provides ultralong endurance and high payload capacity to ocean-deployed sensor systems.
 

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