Electricity generation by effective microorganisms in microbial fuel cell

ENVR 132

Yi Guan, guanyi@tju.edu.cn, Hongli Sun, and Xin Zhang V. Department of Catalytic Science and Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Room 6-502, Building 4, XinYuan Cun, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China
The paper reports that effective microorganisms are used to directly generate power in a two-chamber microbial fuel cell (MFC) by biodegrading synthetic wastewater and actual wastewater of COD concentration. The bacteria can produce mediators by themselves, which was proved by cyclic voltammograms. The MFC had an open circuit voltage (OCV) of 821.6 mV and power of 26.9 mW/m2 was reached when synthetic wastewater is used. The effects of COD concentration and pH value on the cell performance have been tested and the result showed that a higher concentration and lower pH is in favor of electricity-generation of the bacteria. The MFC was used to treat some kind of wastewater, such as wastewater from a beer plant or restaurant and river sewage, produces voltage of 350-500 mV (COD = 500 mg/L), produced stabile power about 112 mW/m2 and then achieves COD removal efficiencies of 30% within 70 hours.
 

General Papers
6:00 PM-8:00 PM, Wednesday, August 22, 2007 BCEC -- Exhibit Hall - B2, Poster

Division of Environmental Chemistry

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007