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Self-standing Electrochemical Set-up to Enrich Anode-respiring Bacteria On-site
Published on: July 24, 2018
Electrochemical treatment of graphite to enhance electron transfer from bacteria to electrodes
Xinhua Tang1, Kun Guo, Haoran Li
1State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
In this paper, graphite felts were continuously electrochemically oxidized to increase the current generation in microbial fuel cells (MFCs). The treated and untreated graphite felts were utilized as anodes in MFCs and current production was compared. The current production on electrochemically treated graphite felt anodes was about 1.13 mA, 39.5% higher compared with that of MFCs containing untreated anodes. The results demonstrated that the electronic coupling between graphite felt electrodes and electrogenic bacteria could be enhanced by electrochemical oxidization of the electrodes. Further study showed that the newly generated carboxyl containing functional groups from electrochemical oxidization were responsible for the enhanced electron transfer, due to their strong hydrogen bonding with peptide bonds in bacterial cytochromes.
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