A new bio hybrid battery uses exolectrogenic microbes of the type Shewanella
oneidensis to produce electricity.
Karlsruhe (Germany). A few years ago, science discovered so-called
exolectrogenic microbes that generate
electricity. Some of these bacteria even live in the human gut. Due to their
anaerobic living conditions used exolektrogene microbes rather than oxygen
metals to the released their metabolic reactions electrons received at.
According to a study published by the University of Massachusetts Amherst in
the journal Nature Nanotechnology , some microbes form bacterial threads whose
conductivity is comparable to that of metals.
Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now presented
a practical way in the scientific journal ACS Applied Materials &
Interfaces to use these electro-microbes as biological electricity producers.
For this purpose, the team around Yong Hu has developed a material in which
the bacteria can grow and that the current they generate is effectively
dissipated via electrodes.
Bacteria of the species Shewanella oneidensis
The bio-battery uses anaerobic bacteria of the species Shewanella oneidensis,
which the scientists isolated in Lake Oneida in New York. Shewanella
oneidensis can produce various elemental metals from heavy metal compounds,
including uranium ,silver ,mercury,lead and iron. The bacteria release
electrons to the metals via filamentous cell sites.
The new biohybrid construction consists of a liquid nutrient solution, which
is a combination of nanostructures and biomolecules. Christof Niemeyer,
co-author, explains that the scientists “have created a porous hydrogel that
consists of carbon nanotubes and silica nanoparticles that are interwoven with
each other through the DNA strands of the bacteria.”
Bacteria multiply in bio batteries
According to Johannes Gescher, co-author of the study, observations of the
cultivation of the material show that "exoelectrogenic bacteria such as
Shewanella oneidensis colonize the conductive scaffold, while other bacteria
such as Escherichia coli only remain on the surface of the matrix." In the
biohybrid According to the scientists, the battery has an electrochemical
activity, which suggests that in the composite containing Shewanella, the
bacteria extract metabolic electrons and transport them to the anode. The
electron flow increases depending on the amount of bacteria present in the
synthetic matrix.
Niemeyer states that this is the first description of such a complex and
functional biohybrid material. According to him, the results indicate that
possible applications of such materials could even go beyond microbial
biosensors, bioreactors and fuel cell systems .
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