Electricity generation and microbial community in microbial fuel cell using low-pH distillery wastewater at different external resistances

摘要

Single chamber MFC (SMFC) consisted of two separator-electrode assemblies (SEA) using low-pH distillery wastewater (DW) was operated under continuous mode. The electricity generation and microbial community were analyzed according to the external resistance (R-ext; 0.1, 0.5, 1, and 5 k Omega). The two SEAs exhibited different electricity generations, despite sharing the same anodic chamber. The SMFC showed the largest maximum power density (PDmax) of 3.7 W/m(3) (SEA 1) and 12.9 W/m(3) (SEA 2) at 5 k Omega. These results demonstrated that low-pH wastewater could be sufficiently used as fuels for electricity generation. Pyrosequencing analysis showed that microbial communities at the phylum level were significantly different according to the R-ext. The communities of SEA 1 were slightly different from those of SEA 2. In both SEAs, Firmicutes (>45%) were the most dominant at 0.1 k Omega, while Firmicutes (>34%) and Caldiserica (>34%) were dominant at 5 k Omega. Caldiserica sp. might significantly contribute to electricity generation under low-pH and high-R-ext. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.