Is it realistic to use microbial photosynthesis to produce electricity directly?

Christopher J Howe; Paolo Bombelli

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3001970

Is it realistic to use microbial photosynthesis to produce electricity directly?

PLoS Biol. 2023 Mar 2;21(3):e3001970. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001970. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Authors

Christopher J Howe¹, Paolo Bombelli¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Abstract

It is possible to generate small amounts of electrical power directly from photosynthetic microorganisms-arguably the greenest of green energy. But will it have useful applications, and what are the hurdles if so?

Copyright: © 2023 Howe, Bombelli. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Electricity*
Photosynthesis*

Grants and funding

The development of the BPV powering a microprocessor was supported by the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (02POC19029 to CJH). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of this manuscript.