Long-term effects of the transient COD concentration on the performance of microbial fuel cells

In this work, the long-term effects of transient chemical oxygen demands (COD) concentrations over the performance of a microbial fuel cell were studied. From the obtained results, it was observed that the repetitive change in the COD loading rate during 12 h conditioned the behavior of the system during periods of up to 7 days. The main modifications were the enhancement of the COD consumption rate and the exerted current. These enhancements yielded increasing Coulombic efficiencies (CEs) when working with COD concentrations of 300 mg/L, but constant CEs when working with COD concentrations from 900 to 1800 mg/L. This effect could be explained by the higher affinity for the substrate of Geobacter than that of the nonelectrogenic organisms such as Clostridia. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 32:883-890, 2016.