The Photo-e-Microbes project will generate green electricity from photosynthetic bacteria to be part of the solution to mitigating climate change and catastrophic ecological collapse. Photosynthetic bacteria have the remarkable ability to generate electricity from sunlight and water as a by-product of photosynthesis. Photosynthetic bacteria may be doing this to communicate with each other, and we can harness this behaviour in biotechnologies called biophotovoltaic devices (BPVs) to generate green electricity.
Electricity outputs from BPVs have been theoretically predicted to be on par with solar panels, but are presently 10-fold lower. The Photo-e-Microbes project will increase the electricity outputs from BPVs by removing electron sinks inside the photosynthetic bacteria and optimising sustainable electrode materials and architectures.
