Project Description

Objectives

Our world is obviously facing several urgent problems in which energy crisis is definitely a major one. Nowadays, there are corresponding solutions to this problem. However, we find that the existing solutions are not satisfactory. There are solar panels to convert light energy into electricity, but it usually requires a large infrastructure. However, the efficiency of the conversion process is still not good enough. In order to improve the situation, our project targets at producing electricity more cheaply, more effectively and in a more portable way.

How can we achieve this?

We employ a light-driven ion pump in our project. By expressing the pump into our target bacterial strain, we can control the bacteria to pump in ions from the environment, and eventually produce a salinity difference. Also, we are going to manufacture a pair of specific electrodes. By making use of the electrodes, the salinity difference as well as our genetically engineered bacteria, we can generate electricity from the salinity difference which is produced by our genetically engineered bacteria in the presence of light. It is a brand new way to generate electricity.