Production of electricity from surplus sludge using a single chamber floating-cathode microbial fuel cell

摘要

A single-chamber, membrane-less and floating-cathode microbial fuel cells (MFC) wasnsuccessfully started up using surplus sludge as fuel without adding carbohydrate after 20 days.nThe electricity generation of the MFC was investigated. The results showed that the obtainednmaximum voltage was 440.7mV when external resistance was 1,000V. There were four phasesn(rapid fall phase, stationary phase, fall phase and stationary phase of low voltage) in the periodicntime of MFC, and the output voltage range of 150–300mV lasted for 107 hours during stationarynphase. In addition, the obtained maximum power density was 220.7mWm22 and internalnresistance was 368.13V in the MFC. Consequently, surplus sludge could be used to generatenelectricity in MFC, which could provide a novel process for sludge recycling.