Growth of electroautotrophic microorganisms using hydrovoltaic energy through natural water evaporation
Guoping Ren, Jie Ye, Qichang Hu, Dong Zhang +2
Representative microbial electrochemical system — matched on the paper’s system type only, not its reactor or geometry.
Reported parameters
No values extracted from this paper yet.
Open in lab for full controls, parameter editing, and template overlays.
Open in lab →What they did
- System
- MES
What worked
No outcome metrics extracted yet.
Abstract
It has been previously shown that devices based on microbial biofilms can generate hydrovoltaic energy from water evaporation. However, the potential of hydrovoltaic energy as an energy source for microbial growth has remained unexplored. Here, we show that the electroautotrophic bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris can directly utilize evaporation-induced hydrovoltaic electrons for growth within biofilms through extracellular electron uptake, with a strong reliance on carbon fixation coupled with nitrate reduction. We obtained similar results with two other electroautotrophic bacterial species. Although the energy conversion efficiency for microbial growth based on hydrovoltaic energy is low compared to other processes such as photosynthesis, we hypothesize that hydrovoltaic energy may potentially contribute to microbial survival and growth in energy-limited environments, given the ubiquity of microbial biofilms and water evaporation conditions.
Keywords
Identifiers
- PubMed
- 38862519
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Year
- 2024