Microbial models for biocathodic electrochemical CO2 transformation: A comprehensive review on pure cultures

Abstract

Electroactive microorganisms, either used as pure cultures or as mixed populations in complex communities, play a key role in microbial electrochemical technologies (MET) and are especially relevant in microbial electro- synthesis (MES). Although most MES research focuses on anaerobic organisms, the exploration of aerobic che- molithoautotrophs becomes relevant and may help mitigating the adverse effect of electrochemical evolution of oxygen. Critical avenues for future development involve increasing mechanistic characterizations of reactors and enhancing the understanding of thermodynamics and energy balance of electrode-cell electron transfer. In this review, we primarily concentrate on exploring and discussing the advancements and key findings in the field of microbial models for MES, and approximate to a model formulation. We highlight the potential benefits of using axenic cultures or mixed bacterial populations of known composition as a way to identify main knowledge gaps for further development of predictive modelling