PERFORMANCE STUDIES OF MICROBIAL FUEL CELL

Rakesh, Chandra, Ujwal Shreenag Meda, R. Suresh

Abstract: Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have gained a lot of attention in recent years for its ability to convert organic matter into electricity in the presence of microbes. Lot of research has been carried out on using wide range of substrates like acetate, glucose, monosaccharaides, domestic wastewater, industrial wastewater etc. Phenol and detergent are the major toxic components from industrial and domestic wastewater. If it is left untreated it can have detrimental effect on all kinds of aquatic life. In industries there are methods available for the treatment of these contaminants; however research on use of MFCs for treatment of these contaminants is still in infant stage. Using MFC will have a dual advantage of wastewater treatment as well as electricity generation. In this study a dual-chamber MFC was fabricated with a CMI 7000 membrane separating the chambers and carbon electrodes for both anode and cathode. Experiments were carried out to study the impact of microbes, type of substrate, substrate concentration and substrate refilling at regular intervals on voltage generated by MFC. Performance of MFC was studied by determining the voltage across 1k? resistor. Furthermore, Industrial waste water from a local soap industry was used as a substrate along with the other substrates prepared in-house. Results showed that a stable voltage of around 134mV can be obtained with phenol as substrate along with a mixed culture of pseudomonas aeruginosa and shewanella putrefaciens in comparison with all other combinations of substrates and microbes

Keywords: Electricity generation, Microbial fuel cell, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Shewanella putrefaciens, Waste water treatment and phenol degradation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0311027