Fuel cell made of GM bacteria
A spoonful of sugar feeds the fuel cell for 80 hours
FacePla.net according to GMA News: Spoonful of sugar helps power fuel cell
A group of Chinese students have developed a microbial fuel cell (MFC) that, after adding one spoonful of sugar, can generate electricity for up to 80 hours.
A team consisting of 17 students from Tianjin University and two high school students used a consortium of multicellular microorganisms in their MFC to create highly efficient and stable electrical power, which helped them receive a gold medal and an award for the best energy project at the international competition of Genetically Engineered Mechanisms 2015, held in September.
The study of a single-strain microbial fuel cell has been going on for many years, but due to the limited potential and strict requirements for cultivation, it was very difficult to create a highly efficient electricity production using one type of electrogenic microorganisms.
Team leader Ling Wei, a student at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Technology, said that the most innovative part of their research was the genetic modification of bacterial strains from three species, namely E.coli, Shewanella and B.subtilis, in the MFC system.
"This is an innovation because no one before us has tried to make a microbial fuel cell (MFC) from three types of microbes. In this way, we can replenish the two elements that are needed for electric power generation by mixing different microbes, and the fuel cell can reach a good level for electricity generation," Lin said.
Lin says that, compared to existing methods of generating energy using wind, water and solar power plants, their cultivated system is more stable, it is independent of weather conditions or location, and demonstrates optimization possibilities for future large-scale electricity production.
"New ways of generating energy, such as solar and wind energy, have a low conversion rate, and perhaps that is why we are not able to use them to their full potential, achieving efficiency of only 20 percent so far. As for our microbial fuel cell, it can produce electricity in a highly efficient way, and can convert inorganic substances such as salt, along with simple glucose, into electricity in an efficient way," Lin said.
The fuel cell that the team is currently working on can reach an output power of 520 mV more than 80 hours after sugar or grass is added to the system.
"We hope that we will be able to make the fuel cell significantly smaller, with a longer duration of electrical power and more electricity, so that it can become one of the new energy sources in the future, like lithium batteries that we usually use in our daily lives," said biomechanical engineer Liu Yue.
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26.11.2015