Archaea-based Microbial Fuel Cell Operating at High Ionic Strength Conditions

ABREVAYA, X.C.; SACCO, N.J.; MAUAS, P.J.D.; CORTÓN, E.

EXTREMOPHILES

SPRINGER TOKYO

Año: 2011 p. 633 - 642

1431-0651

In this work, two archaea microorganisms(Haloferax volcanii and Natrialba magadii) used asbiocatalyst at a microbial fuel cell (MFC) anode wereevaluated. Both archaea are able to grow at high saltconcentrations. By increasing the media conductivity, theinternal resistance was diminished, improving the MFC’sperformance. Without any added redox mediator, maximumpower (Pmax) and current at Pmax were 11.87/4.57/0.12 lW cm-2 and 49.67/22.03/0.59 lA cm-2 for H. volcanii,N. magadii and E. coli, respectively. When neutralred was used as the redox mediator, Pmax was 50.98 and5.39 lW cm-2 for H. volcanii and N. magadii, respectively.In this paper, an archaea MFC is described andcompared with other MFC systems; the high salt concentrationassayed here, comparable with that used in Pt-catalyzedalkaline hydrogen fuel cells, will open new optionswhen MFC scaling up is the objective necessary for practicalapplications.