FUNGAL FLOW-BATTERY FOR STORING SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

Denmark is world leading in production of sustainable energy from wind turbines and 42 % of our national consumption of electricity was covered by wind energy in 2015. However, wind turbines and other sustainable energy sources require additional efficient energy storage for full exploitation of their potential. The most promising technology is redox flow batteries, a concept that has been on the market for a couple of decades, but suffers from environmental and up-scale challenges [1]. The up-scale challenge has recently been overcome by the development of flow batteries based on quinone [1, 2], which are oxidized aromatic compounds with two carbonyl groups that can serve as electron donors or acceptors. The quinones used to develop the first quinone flow batteries were derived from crude oil (petro-quinones), which goes against the sustainable thinking of renewable energy. Filamentous fungi offer the solution as they produce numerous quinone pigments in high quantities and in the project we will utilize this ability to generate a sustainable “all fungal quinone-quinone flow battery”.