How Comparable are Microbial Electrochemical Systems around the Globe? An Electrochemical and Microbiological Cross‐Laboratory Study
Carlo Santoro, Sofia Babanova, Pierangela Cristiani, Kateryna Artyushkova +14
Representative MFC — matched on the paper’s system type only, not its reactor or geometry.
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Open in lab →What they did
- System
- MFC
- Substrate
- pure compound
- Inoculum
- Pseudomonadales
What worked
No outcome metrics extracted yet.
Abstract
AbstractA cross‐laboratory study on microbial fuel cells (MFC) which involved different institutions around the world is presented. The study aims to assess the development of autochthone microbial pools enriched from domestic wastewater, cultivated in identical single‐chamber MFCs, operated in the same way, thereby approaching the idea of developing common standards for MFCs. The MFCs are inoculated with domestic wastewater in different geographic locations. The acclimation stage and, consequently, the startup time are longer or shorter depending on the inoculum, but all MFCs reach similar maximum power outputs (55±22 μW cm⁻²) and COD removal efficiencies (87±9 %), despite the diversity of the bacterial communities. It is inferred that the MFC performance starts when the syntrophic interaction of fermentative and electrogenic bacteria stabilizes under anaerobic conditions at the anode. The generated power is mostly limited by electrolytic conductivity, electrode overpotentials, and an unbalanced external resistance. The enriched microbial consortia, although composed of different bacterial groups, share similar functions both on the anode and the cathode of the different MFCs, resulting in similar electrochemical output.
Keywords
Identifiers
- Journal
- ChemSusChem
- Year
- 2021