Bacteria Could Grow Nanowires to Create a Giant Living Biogeobattery
25 February 2010 | Green Technology | 1 Comment
Researchers have analyzed several years Geobacter microorganisms and they found that this type of bacteria can produce electricity when mixed with seawater and mud. Bacteria that live in marine sediment are able to produce electrons and then to transfer them in the upper layers of the sediments. The distance between the two layers is a few inches, which means that bacteria can transfer electrons on a distance of up to 20.000 times their body size.
Lars Peter Nielsen at Aarhus University in Denmark explained how these bacteria react with matter around them but the only thing that still raises questions (even for him) is how microorganisms can create these effective electric networks. However, these bacteria underlying the development of microbial fuel cells could lead scientists to create a biogeobattery (a giant natural battery that generates electricity). As they say, this process is divided in two stages: first, the electrons are produced by reactions between hydrogen sulphide and organic matter in the lower layers of sediment and then in the second stage the electrons are transferred to the surface layers to react with oxygen. To understand how it works, you must know that in this type of sediment only bacteria from the bottom layers have access to the organic material while the ones at the top have access to oxygen. We still don’t know how but these bacteria can create some links between the two layers. So, this electric network allow electrons to move from side to side, from the bottom to top, in order to react with oxigen. Nielsen believes that these links are actually some nanowires created by bacteria but he still has no evidence to prove this thing. “You have processes going on deep down in the sediment that are connected to the oxygen consumption at the very surface of the sediment. This is evidently mediated by bacteria”, says Nielsen. “It is just a matter of time before the full implications of bacterial nanowires from diverse environments and organisms are recognized”, says Yuri Gorby at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, California.
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