Improving fermentation industry sludge treatment as well as energy production with constructed dual chamber microbial fuel cell

摘要

Microbial fuel cells offer a breakthrough for treatment of waste content coupled with energy generation. However, theirapplications are mostly limited to laboratories. Present research is focused on conducting the biological conversionof sludge originated from fermentation industry using microbial fuel cell (MFC). The efficiency of MFC was studied atdifferent operating and nutritional conditions including pH, aeration rate and substrate concentration with biocatalystSaccharomyces cerevisiae. The optimized conditions in terms of yielding maximum power density of 610 ± 30 mW/m~2were reported at substrate concentration of 60% at 160 ml/min aeration rate and pH of 6, corresponding to a currentdensity of 994 ± 41 mA/m~2. Results suggested that utilization of fermented sludge in MFC could give direction to handlethe problem of fermentation industries and also to overcome a small fraction of energy crisis.