Journal des bioprocédés et des biotechniques

Impact of Salt Concentrations on Electricity Generation using Hostel Sludge Based Duel Chambered Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

Anand Parkash*, Shaheen Aziz and Soomro SA

Electrical energy needs in Pakistan are expected to continue to rise. The use of petroleum as a source of energy still dominates, although oil reserves in Pakistan are increasingly being depleted. Therefore, there is a need to develop alternative source of sustainable energy, such as Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC). MFC shows another type of renewable energy by changing natural matter into power with the help of microbes. In the present study, varied salt concentrations of a salt bridge in novel MFC design were analyzed. Sewage sludge was utilized, which contains a lot of organic materials and is additionally one of the major sources of ecological contamination, as substrate MFC. Saccharomyces cerverciae sp. (44 g) was used as a biocatalyst. Methylene blue (10 ml) was used as a mediator and potassium ferricyanide (100 ml) was used as an oxidizing agent for the conversion of sewage sludge into voltage generation using lab-scale double chamber MFC. Varied salt concentrations (1M, 3M and 5M of KCl and NaCl) of salt concentrations of salt bridge in a novel MFC design were analyzed. The maximum generated voltage, current, power, power density and current density with 1M KCl were 0.451 V, 0.0451, 0.0175561 mW, 0.000226001 mW/m2, 10.5166661 μA/m2 respectively. The MFC was run for a period of 1 day and readings were noted at regular intervals. The results obtained were helpful in designing an optimized MFC.