Promoting Interspecies Electron Transfer with Biochar

By Shan-Yu Chen, Amelia-Elena Rotaru, P. Shrestha, N. Malvankar, Fanghua Liu, W. Fan, Kelly P. Nevin, Derek R. Lovley. Scientific Reports, 2014

670 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Biochar, a charcoal-like product of the incomplete combustion of organic materials, is an increasingly popular soil amendment designed to improve soil fertility. We investigated the possibility that biochar could promote direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) in a manner similar to that previously reported for granular activated carbon (GAC). Although the biochars investigated were 1000 times less conductive than GAC, they stimulated DIET in co-cultures of Geobacter metallireducens with Geobacter sulfurreducens or Methanosarcina barkeri in which ethanol was the electron donor. Cells were attached to the biochar, yet not in close contact, suggesting that electrons were likely conducted through the biochar, rather than biological electrical connections. The finding that biochar can stimulate DIET may be an important consideration when amending soils with biochar and can help explain why biochar may enhance methane production from organic wastes under anaerobic conditions.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f11388f8a051436d3ac9e522483f2adc9510e325

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Environmental Engineering

1. Sining Yun
2. Yongwei Zhang
3. Yasir Abbas
4. Ziqi Wang
5. Xian-ming Zhang
6. Kaijun Wang
7. Gail Taylor
8. G. Pan

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. Sining Yun
2. Derek R. Lovley
3. Baoliang Chen
4. B. Logan
5. Korneel Rabaey

In Water Science and Technology

1. Lizhong Zhu
2. Baoliang Chen
3. Gail Taylor
4. Geoffrey M. Gadd

Citations in the corpus

• Effects and mechanisms of biochar-microbe interactions in soil improvement and pollution remediation: A review. (2017, background): “Biochar can participate in soil processes such as organic matter decomposition as it takes part in the direct extracellular electron transfer (DEET) between soil organic matter (or soil minerals) and microbial cells, as well as in the direct interspecific electron transfer betweenmicrobial cells (DI”
• The Electrochemical Properties of Biochars and How They Affect Soil Redox Properties and Processes (2015, methodology): “[9] determined the electrical conductivities of biochar by two-probe electrical conductance measurements using two gold electrodes separated by a 50 μm non-conductive gap.”
• Biochar alters the soil microbiome and soil function: results of next‐generation amplicon sequencing across Europe (2017, positive): “We found that whilst some phyla (such as the Gemmatimonadetes) showed similar responses at multiple sites, many taxa showed variation in response.”
• Recent advances in bio-based carbon materials for anaerobic digestion: A review (2021, positive): “As mentioned above, DIET can also easily and efficiently occur through bio-based carbon materials as nonbiological conduits [103].”
• Syntrophy Goes Electric: Direct Interspecies Electron Transfer. (2017, background): “Whereas magnetite particles are smaller than microbial cells and thus attach to individual cells, multiple partner cells attach to conductive carbon materials shown to facilitate DIET, such as granular activated carbon (53), biochar (15), and carbon cloth (14).”