INVESTIGADORES
BUSALMEN juan pablo
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Influence of working conditions on the performance of pure culture Geobacter sulfurreducens microbial fuel cells
Autor/es:
ORTÍZ, JUAN MANUEL; MAESTRO, BEATRÍZ; SCHROTT, GERMÁN DAVID; BUSALMEN, JUAN PABLO; CLIMENT, VICTOR; ALDÁZ, ANTONIO; FELIU, JUAN MIGUEL
Lugar:
Leewarden
Reunión:
Conferencia; 3rd International Conference on Microbial Fuel Cells; 2011
Resumen:
Wastewaters
containing high amount of organic matter are a potential energy storage that
actually represent almost 10-fold the energy that is invested in their
treating. Urban wastewaters are classically processed under anaerobic
conditions in order to transform organic matter into acetate and short-chain
organic acids, and then are further converted into methane through an
additional treatment to be used as energy source. This process could be
modified by replacing such a methanogenic stage by an advanced microbial fuel
cell (MFC) system able to produce electricity from acetate at high rate by
means of electrogenic biofilms. Therefore, MFC constitute an attractive option to
couple wastewater treatment and energy recovery.
Among the
microorganism suitable for these purposes, bacteria belonging to Geobacter
genera are currently being intensively investigated regarding their direct
electron transfer electrodes. The most common anode reaction in MFC involves
acetate oxidation that is combined with suitable cathodic reaction (for
example, the reduction of oxygen).
The
development of the concept of energy cogeneration and effluent bioremediation
using a MFC requires the analysis of all the elements of the cell and the study
of the influence of different working conditions. In this study, we will
present the results obtained with different cells inoculated with a pure
culture of G. sulfurreducens. The MFCs were run with synthetic wastewater
containing 20mM acetate as feed stream, at different operational conditions
(batch and continuous mode), with several anode materials (carbon particles, carbon
felt, graphite plates), and cathodic counterparts (Pt/C on carbon cloth, KmnO4
with graphite electrode and air diffusion cathodes).
The data
obtained in this work will be useful for the design, construction and
optimization of a system dealing with real wastewater at a pre-industrial
scale.