Review
Microbial solar cells: applying photosynthetic and electrochemically active organisms

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2010.10.001Get rights and content

Microbial solar cells (MSCs) are recently developed technologies that utilize solar energy to produce electricity or chemicals. MSCs use photoautotrophic microorganisms or higher plants to harvest solar energy, and use electrochemically active microorganisms in the bioelectrochemical system to generate electrical current. Here, we review the principles and performance of various MSCs in an effort to identify the most promising systems, as well as the bottlenecks and potential solutions, for “real-life” MSC applications. We present an outlook on future applications based on the intrinsic advantages of MSCs, specifically highlighting how these living energy systems can facilitate the development of an electricity-producing green roof.

Introduction

Society is facing local and global challenges to secure the needs of people and planet 1, 2. One of those needs is energy, which should be available in the form of electricity or fuels, ideally produced from a renewable source via an efficient and clean conversion process. Microbial solar cell (MSC) is the collective name for new biotechnological systems that integrate photosynthetic and electrochemically active organisms to generate in situ green electricity or chemical compounds, such as hydrogen, methane, ethanol and hydrogen peroxide 3, 4, 5. The MSC builds on the discovery of electrochemically active bacteria and the subsequent development of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) 6, 7, 8, which typically clean wastewater and generate electricity from biodegradable organic compounds present. Within the MFC, electrochemically active bacteria at the anode oxidize organic compounds and deliver electrons to the anode. These electrons flow through a power harvester to the cathode, where electrons are delivered to reduce oxygen [9]. In an MSC, photosynthetic organisms use sunlight to produce organic matter that is further converted into electricity using the MFC 10, 11. The most-investigated MSC is the plant MFC, which has a living plant that delivers organic matter via its roots to electrochemically active bacteria in the MFC 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

Our aim is to review the principles and performance of MSCs, and to describe the challenges and the outlook for future applications of these technologies. Various MSCs have been described recently and these can be categorized according to the way solar energy is captured and the mode of organic matter transfer from the photosynthetic portion to the fuel cell. Both the reported and potential performance of different MSCs are analyzed to identify bottlenecks and possible solutions. Currently, it is not possible to predict the cost-effectiveness of the technology; however, on the basis of known advantages of MSC technology, potential applications and tradeoffs with other renewable energy generation technologies are discussed.

Section snippets

Principles and performance of MSCs

The basic principles of MSCs, as illustrated in Figure 1, are: (i) photosynthesis; (ii) transport of organic matter to the anode compartment; (iii) anodic oxidation of organic matter by electrochemically active bacteria; and (iv) cathodic reduction of oxygen. We have categorized the MSCs below according to the way in which solar energy is captured and the mode of organic matter transfer: a higher plant with rhizodeposition; a phototrophic biofilm with diffusion; or a photobioreactor or coastal

Challenges in improving energy recovery

Reviews in the previous section of the most recent expectations for theoretical power generation and the performance achieved reveal that PMFCs and phototrophic biofilms have the highest power generation (50 and 7 mW/m2, respectively) 14, 35 and highest estimated net power potential (67 and 61 mW/m2, respectively). Thus, PMFCs and phototrophic biofilms are the most promising MSC systems. Overall, MSCs are robust, with operating times in the range 5–175 days (Table 1) 12, 34. By contrast, other

Prospects and future applications

We have shown that MSC technology is advancing, with the most promising MSCs using higher plants or phototrophic biofilms. The basic principles of MSCs have been demonstrated; now it is time to improve the systems for real-life applications. Compared to conventional solar cells, MSCs have some attractive properties that warrant further development and will influence future applications of this technology [78]:

  • MSCs can produce not only electricity, but also a wide range of fuels and chemicals;

Acknowledgements

This research received funding from the European Community Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement no. 226532. In addition, work was funded by SenterNovem, the Dutch governmental agency for sustainability and innovation from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (grant no. EOSLT06020) and NUON. We thank Nora Sutton, Marc Spiller, Jan Arends and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript.

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