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Waste Water Derived Electroactive Microbial Biofilms: Growth, Maintenance, and Basic Characterization
Published on: December 29, 2013
Gaseous isopropanol removal in a microbial fuel cell with deoxidizing anode: Performance, anode characteristics and
Shu-Hui Liu1, Hsin-Hui Lin1, Chi-Wen Lin1
1Department of Safety, Health and Environmental Engineering, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin 64002, Taiwan, ROC.
Abstract:
A deoxidizing packing material (DPM) with an encapsulated deoxidizing agent (DA) was developed to construct the packed anodes of a trickle-bed microbial fuel cell (TB-MFC) for treating waste gas. The encapsulated DA can consume O2 in waste gas and increase the voltage output and power density (PD) of the constructed TB-MFC. The DPM effectively enables the circulating water in TB-MFC for maintaining a low level of dissolved oxygen for 80 h. The results revealed that when the concentration of isopropanol (IPA) in waste gas was 0.74 g/m3, the TB-MFC (DPM with DA) exhibited an IPA removal efficiency (RE) of up to 99.7%. When DPM with DA was used as the packing material of the TB-MFC (486.6 mW/m3), the PD was 2.54 times that obtained when using coke as the packing material (191.6 mW/m3). The next-generation sequencing results demonstrated that because the oxygen content of the MFC anode chamber decreased over time in the TB-MFC, the richness of anaerobic electrogens (Pseudoxanthomonas, Flavobacterium, and Ferruginibacter) in the packing materials was increased. These electrogens mainly attached to the DPM, and IPA-degraders appeared in the circulating water of the TB-MFC. This enabled the TB-MFC to simultaneously achieve a high voltage output and IPA RE.
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