Enhanced microbial electrosynthesis with three-dimensional graphene functionalized cathodes fabricated via solvothermal synthesis

Highly Conductive Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) Polystyrene Sulfonate Polymer Coated Cathode for the Microbial Electrosynthesis of Acetate From Carbon Dioxide

“…Until now, the three-dimensional graphene carbon felt electrode (3D-G-CF) was the best reported cathode material for MES with wild type S. ovata as microbial catalyst and a cathode potential set at −690 mV versus SHE. The PEDOT:PSS-carbon cloth cathode performance was similar to the 3D-G-CF, which had an acetate production rate of 231.4 ± 7.4 mmol d −1 per m 2 of electrode (Aryal et al, 2016). The PEDOT:PSS-carbon cloth electrode is more performant than other carbon-based cathodes tested at the same potential with S. ovata wild type including carbon cloth, carbon paper, carbon felt and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) paper (Aryal et al, 2017a).…”

“…Carbon cloth (Jiangsu Tongkang Special Activated Carbon Fiber & Fabric Co., Ltd, China) was first pretreated by immersion into 3M HNO 3 during 12 h before being extensively washed with ultrapure water (Aryal et al, 2016). The conductivity of carbon cloth is ca.…”

“…For CLSM, S. ovata cells present on cathodes were stained with the LIVE/DEAD R BacLight TM Bacterial Viability Kit (ThermoFisher Scientific). Images were taken with a Zeiss LSM 5 Pascal microscope and analyzed with the ZEN imaging software (Zeiss, Germany) (Aryal et al, 2016). For SEM images, cathodes from MES reactors were fixed with 0.1M buffer solution at pH 7.0 containing 2.5% glutaraldehyde for 5 h at room temperature.…”

“…Fixed samples were washed with the same buffer without glutaraldehyde and then immersed successively in acetonitrile and ethanol before being dried under nitrogen as described previously . SEM images were taken with a Quanta 200 FEG scanning electron microscope (FEI) at an accelerating voltage of 10 V under high vacuum condition (Aryal et al, 2016).…”

“…More recently, a highly performant MES cathode made of multiwalled carbon nanotube coated onto reticulated vitreous carbon was developed (Jourdin et al, 2014(Jourdin et al, , 2015(Jourdin et al, , 2016. The potential of graphene, a robust, cheap and highly conductive material, was also explored for MES (Aryal et al, 2016(Aryal et al, , 2017aChen et al, 2016;Song et al, 2017).…”