The new bacteria that Swiss scientists have created can generate electricity in various types of environment, making it suitable for widespread and useful application.
The Swiss researchers have developed a method for employing microorganisms to produce power from brewery wastewater. To do this, a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) modified the ‘Escherichia coli’ bacteria.
According to lead author and chemical engineer Ardemis Boghossian, “E. coli can grow on a wide range of sources, which allowed us to produce electricity in a wide range of environments, including from wastewater.”
What makes it important?
According to Ardemis, researchers have already discovered a few unusual bacteria with the ability to spontaneously generate electricity. However, they can only accomplish this when certain unique components are present.
However, the new bacteria created by the Swiss scientists can generate electricity in a variety of atmospheric conditions, making it suitable for widespread and useful application.
The instructions for the protein complexes were added to the bacteria’s DNA through genetic engineering in order to improve one of the most well-known bacterial electricity producers, Shewanella oneidensis.
Scientists were able to double the electro-activity of E. coli by doing this.
However, it should be noted that those tests were carried out in a lab context, therefore it is still unclear whether or not the same outcomes would be possible in an industrial situation.
E. coli is more effective in treating wastewater
Additionally, scientists have discovered that E. coli is more appropriate for treating industrial wastewater than Shewanella oneidensis.
Since the water used for cleaning grains and rinsing tanks contains a complex mixture of sugars, starches, alcohols, and yeast, breweries are typically required to cleanse the water before discarding it. This effluent may promote unfavorable microbial growth if not treated.
The team used an experiment with their customized E. coli system and a sample of wastewater from a nearby brewery in Lausanne, Switzerland, to show off their solution. Surprisingly, within 50 hours, the transformed bacteria effectively devoured this effluent.
According to Boghossian, “Our bioengineered electric bacteria were able to flourish exponentially by feeding off this waste,” in contrast to S. oneidensis, the comparator employed in the study, which was unable to digest the combined effluent.
Even if it produces energy at a somewhat slower rate than S. oneidensis, this breakthrough emphasizes the potential of altered E. coli for the treatment of industrial wastewater, according to the researchers.