[NewCandle] Evolving microbes for fuel cells/xmutation?

[Nick Reiter]

Hi Keith and all,

I was going to point you toward some oddball papers from 2002 era that my son had posted on Sam Faile's geocities site, but something is amiss and Geocities has the page unavailable.  Which is a bit odd - I know Geocities is closing out October 26th, and we were going to move the material to another page somewhere, but now I can't get to it.

Anyway, the point was this - in 2002 or so, we tried those experiments some might recall where we used baker's yeast as well as soil fungus to moderate the radioactive decay of Th and U that was laced into a soy milk matrix.  Had some interesting results, although it was pointed out that even normal uptake by the organism might have changed the count rate a bit on the Geiger counter nearby.  I did do some EDS back at that time, though, and I seem to recall that there were some sporadic 1 to 2% type values of a couple of lighter elements I couldn't easily account for, such as Ti, Ni, S.

If the site opens back up, I will post a link.  I still have original documents backed up, but will need to get them uploaded somewhere, if Geocities is down for good.

All of this, plus staring at the tubes of corroded Al - Ag on the lab shelf, has made me think about the role of micro-organisms - be they fungi, yeast, nanobacteria, algae - in low energy transmutation.  Its been pretty well decided, as I understand it, that nanobacteria infiltrate just about every cubic mm of everything at, above, or below the earth's surface.  What if we could corral, train, breed, or tune, nanobacterial forms to not just make good fuel cell fuel and material refiners, but actual transmuters, presumably making use of the QV at their size scale...

nr



> researchers at U of M. have evolved
> a natural bacteria to be more efficient at producing
> anodic
> current. One wonders what the limiting factor might be: at
> those current densities, with active carbon substrates,
> one
> could produce some serious power. 
> 
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090729210821.htm
> 
> On a related subject, was there ever any followup research
> concerning baterial transmutations as described by Kevran
> et al. I found nothing on Jed's site.
> 
> K. 
> 
> >From the abstract:
> Geobacter sulfurreducens produces current densities in
> microbial fuel cells that are among the highest known for
> pure
> cultures. The possibility of adapting this organism to
> produce
> even higher current densities was evaluated. A system in
> which
> a graphite anode was poised at 400 mV (versus Ag/AgCl) was
> inoculated with the wild-type strain of G. sulfurreducens,
> strain DL-1. An isolate, designated strain KN400, was
> recovered from the biofilm after 5 months of growth on the
> electrode. KN400 was much more effective in current
> production
> than strain DL-1. This was apparent with anodes poised at
> 400
> mV, as well as in systems run in true fuel cell mode.
> KN400
> had current (7.6 A/m2) and power (3.9 W/m2) densities that
> respectively were substantially higher than those of DL1
> (1.4
> A/m2 and 0.5 W/m2).
> 
> On a per cell basis KN400 was more effective in current
> production than DL1, requiring thinner biofilms to make
> equivalent current. The enhanced capacity for current
> production in KN400 was associated with a greater abundance
> of
> electrically conductive microbial nanowires than DL1 and
> lower
> internal resistance (0.015 versus 0.130 /m2) and mass
> transfer
> limitation in KN400 fuel cells. KN400 produced flagella,
> whereas DL1 does not. Surprisingly, KN400 had much less
> outer-
> surface c-type cytochromes than DL1. KN400 also had a
> greater
> propensity to form biofilms on glass or graphite than DL1,
> even when growing with the soluble electron acceptor,
> fumarate.
> 
> These results demonstrate that it is possible to enhance
> the
> ability of microorganisms to electrochemically interact
> with
> electrodes with the appropriate selective pressure and
> that
> improved current production is associated with clear
> differences in the properties of the outer surface of the
> cell
> that may provide insights into the mechanisms for microbe-
> electrode interactions.
> 
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