Cyanobacteria as a source of electricity?

[Geraud]

Next thing we know, people will be proud to grow cyano in their tank: "Lowered my electricity bill since they started powering my MP10's!" Alright, it is only 0.3uW for now. So we might need a lot of cyano to make things work ?

Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months

Blue-green algae, a type of cyanobacteria, set in a container on a windowsill powered a computer continuously for six months using photosynthesis

www.newscientist.com

 

[Josh]

This has been available for quite some time if you had a lot of space, basically you turn the algae into biofuel. What was missing was a space-economic version that allows us to directly power a small object with the fuel that we are currently flushing down the toilet (hopefully after freezing to kill the plant life).

Anyone working on something like this?

 

[homegrowncichlid]

I don't have a subscription, what mechanism is converting the photosysthesis into electricity?

 

[Timfish]

And we can eat it too! Save having to buy probiotics stuff!

 

[Geraud]

I don't have a subscription, what mechanism is converting the photosysthesis into electricity?

That's the process they do not understand. At first they checked if the anode was corroded, but did not see anything, so their theory is that the bacteria do create the current.

"
Howe says that there are two potential ideas for the source of the power. Either the cyanobacteria themselves produce electrons, which creates a current, or they create conditions in which the aluminium anode in the container is corroded in a chemical reaction that produces electrons. Because the experiment ran without any significant degrading of the anode the researchers believe that the cyanobacteria are producing the bulk of the current.
"