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Towards an engineering-oriented strategy for building microbial anodes for microbial fuel cells.

Pocaznoi, Diana and Erable, Benjamin and Etcheverry, Luc and Délia, Marie-Line and Bergel, Alain Towards an engineering-oriented strategy for building microbial anodes for microbial fuel cells. (2012) Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics , 14 (38). 13332-13343. ISSN 1463-9084

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C2CP42571H

Abstract

The objective of the work was to give some first insight into an engineering-oriented approach to MFC design by focusing on anode optimisation. The effect of various parameters was firstly investigated in half cell set-ups under well-controlled conditions. Microbial anodes were formed from soil leachate under polarisation at -0.2 V vs. SCE with different concentrations of substrate, salt and buffer. It was shown that non-turnover CV could be used to assess the electroactive maturity of the anodes during polarisation. This first phase resulted in the definition of a set of optimal parameter values. In the second phase, an optimal anode was formed in a half-cell under the defined optimal conditions. A numerical approach was then developed to calculate the theoretical maximum power that the anode could provide in an ideal MFC. The concept of "ideal MFC" introduced here allowed the theoretical maximum power to be calculated on the sole basis of the kinetic characteristics of the anode. Finally, a MFC designed in the aim of approaching such ideal conditions generated stable power densities of 6.0 W m(-2), which were among the highest values reported so far. The discrepancy between the theoretical maximum (8.9 W m(-2)) and the experimental results pointed out some limit due to the source of inoculum and suggested possible paths to improvement.

Item Type:Article
Additional Information:Thanks to Royal Society of Chemistry editor. The definitive version will be available after 12 months from acceptance.
HAL Id:hal-03531000
Audience (journal):International peer-reviewed journal
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Institution:French research institutions > Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CNRS (FRANCE)
Université de Toulouse > Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse - Toulouse INP (FRANCE)
Université de Toulouse > Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier - UT3 (FRANCE)
Laboratory name:
Laboratoire de Génie Chimique - LGC (Toulouse, France) - Réaction, mélange & séparation (RMS)
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Deposited On:04 Dec 2012 12:57

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