The development and utilization of renewable energy is the only way for human society to achieve sustainable development. As the most abundant renewable energy on earth, the basic and applied research of solar energy utilization has great scientific and practical significance.
Photovoltaic power generation is the main form of solar energy utilization, and its core technology is the use of semiconductor materials to convert solar energy into electrical energy. With the continuous improvement of energy conversion efficiency and the continuous reduction of manufacturing costs, the global installed capacity of solar photovoltaics has exceeded 500 GW. However, some photovoltaic materials contain toxic elements, the amount of waste solar panels is large and difficult to recycle, and the manufacturing process of photovoltaic devices involves the use of toxic and hazardous chemicals. With the continuous promotion and use of solar photovoltaic, its potential negative impact on the environment cannot be ignored.
Biophotovoltaics (BPV) provides a biological path for solar energy utilization. Biophotovoltaic uses photosynthetic microorganisms (such as cyanobacteria) as photoelectric conversion materials. It has the characteristics of carbon neutrality, good environmental compatibility and potential low cost. It is expected to become a new generation of solar power generation technology that is more environmentally friendly.
However, the output power of the current BPV system is very low, which is more than 3 orders of magnitude lower than that of solar photovoltaics. The main reason is that although photosynthetic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria have a high photosynthetic efficiency, the electricity-generating activity is weak. In the direct transformation of cyanobacteria to enhance its electrical production activity, there have been no successful reports.
In order to improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency of BPV, the research team of Li Yin from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences took a different approach and designed and created a synthetic microbiome with directional electron flow to solve the problem of weak direct electricity production by cyanobacteria.
The synthetic microbiome consists of an engineered cyanobacteria that can store light energy in d-lactic acid and a Shewanella that can efficiently use d-lactic acid to generate electricity (pictured). In this group of synthetic microorganisms, d-lactic acid is an energy carrier between two microorganisms. Cyanobacteria absorbs light energy and fixes CO2 to synthesize energy carrier d-lactic acid. Shewanella oxidizes d-lactic acid to generate electricity, thereby forming a directional electron flow from photon to d-lactic acid to electrical energy. The energy conversion process from chemical energy to electrical energy.
Through the design, modification and optimization at the genetic, environmental and device levels, the researchers effectively overcome the problem of physiological incompatibility between the two microorganisms. The dual-bacteria bio-photovoltaic system created in this way achieves an efficient and stable power output with a maximum power density of 150 mW / m2, which is generally more than 10 times higher than the current single-bacteria bio-photovoltaic system. Using continuous feed culture, the dual-bacteria biophotovoltaic system can stably achieve power output of more than 40 days, and the average power density reaches a high level of 135 mW / m2. In terms of power generation time and single device output power All reached the highest level of the current BPV system.
This is the first international report on the use of synthetic microbiome with directional electron flow to create biophotovoltaic, and it is also the first biophotovoltaic prototype device in China. This study proves that the use of a synthetic microbiome with directional electron flow can significantly improve the BPV photoelectric conversion efficiency, breaking people's inherent understanding of the difficulty in improving the biophotovoltaic efficiency and life, and laying an important foundation for further improving the BPV photoelectric conversion efficiency.
The study was published online on September 19 in the international academic journal Nature Communications, entitled Development of a longevous two-species biophotovoltaics with constrained electron flow (DOI: 10.1038 / s41467-019-12190-w) . Zhu Huawei, a PhD student of the Institute of Microbiology, is the first author of the paper, and researchers Li Yin and Zhang Yanping are co-corresponding authors. The research was supported by key deployment projects of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Schematic diagram of a dual-bacteria biophotovoltaic cartoon with directed electron flow
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