Decreasing Microbial Fuel Cell Start-Up Time Using Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

The bioelectrochemical systems are a sustainable technology that can be used to obtain electricity and/or reduced compounds. However, this novel technology presents several challenges prior to its implementation at full-scale. The aim of the present study was to evaluate different nanomaterials of electrode and mediators to increase the performance of BioElectrochemical Systems production. In order to achieve this objective, it was compared the use of Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes and Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes plus electron exogenous mediator (Meldola’s Blue) against plain graphite anode in order to evaluate the overall start-up time and other electro-chemical features. The use of multi-walled carbon nanotubes reduces substantially (by 75%) the start-up time required in a microbial fuel cell to produce stable voltage both, with and without the use of mediator compare to the plain anode. This reduction of the required time can be a consequence of the formation of anodic binders between this compound and the bacteria. With the independence of the start-up time, the current production was similar in the three studied cases, about 650 mV. Use of nanotubes modified anode surfaces might be especially interesting in cases of recovery after unstable operation of a microbial fuel cell, and/or reducing the start-up time for the generation of energy from new systems.

Experimental Study on the Microbial Community Structure of the Sediment of Pi River under the Different pH in Winter

“…In addition, the spatial distribution of river bacterial community was also related to landscape and hydrology to some extent (Crump et al, 2007;Lindström et al, 2005). At present, most of the studies on surface water and sediment have been focused on antibiotics, which based on the impact of human activities (Zhou et al, 2019), phenolic, nutrients (Howarth et al, 2000) and algal characteristics (Biggs, 2000;Flynn et al, 2013) and other physical and chemical indicators (Jiménez-Rodríguez et al, 2019;Metwally et al, 2020;Scharnberg et al, 2020). However, compared with marine or lake ecosystems, the diversity of microbial communities is still lack of in-depth study in urban rivers.…”

Electrochemical noise analysis of a PEM fuel cell stack under long-time operation: noise signature in the frequency domain

“…In the field of green chemistry, hydrogen can be seen as a byproduct of the bio-electrochemical conversion of organic compounds [5][6][7]. Microbial Fuel Cells [8,9] can be relevant to obtain the sustainable conversion of energy. More generally, electrochemical reactor development in water or chemical treatment [10,11] is a topic of interest.…”