Bacteria-Powered solar panels
A solar cell is a cell which converts sun's light energy to electric energy, but this time a group of researchers from University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada has invented such solar cell which will generate electricity with the help of bacteria.
The researchers have found that most of the bacteria are capable of converting sunlight into energy by the process of photosynthesis, E. Colli is the breed of bacteria which can convert light to energy, so researchers are able to generate electricity with help of this bacteria. These cells are also called "biogenic" cell. Further in future, we can see this biogenic cell instead of a normal solar cell because solar cell gives the maximum amount of electricity during bright sunlight whereas these bacterias are able to produce in bright sunny condition as well as with cloudy conditions.
Previously researchers tried to isolate the chemicals produced by these bacteria during the photosynthesis process, but this isolation of chemicals and further using inside the solar cell is a difficult, time-consuming and expensive process. So, researchers tried a new method instead of this isolation techniques, they tried in increasing E. Colli bacteria to have a large amount of photosynthesis chemicals and instead of isolation these chemicals are left inside the bacteria itself, then covering those bacteria with the semiconducting device to generate electricity.
One of the big advantages of these bacteria solar panel is that it works in cloudy day to generate plenty of electricity. It is made of less expensive material but required a complicated manufacturing process. These cells are still under development, the researchers are trying for further improvement. One day we hope to see this type of cells instead of costly solar cells.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment