Bioelectricity production from various feedstocks using pure strain of bacillus firmus

Abstract

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are bio-electrochemical devices that exploit microorganisms for producing electricity from a variety of materials, including complex organic waste and renewable biomass. In this study, the heterotrophic microbe, Bacillus firmus was used as the active bacterial component with synthetic waste waters for bio-electricity production. Three identical mediatorless and membraneless single chambered microbial fuel cells (MFCs) without catalyst was fabricated with different carbon source and operated in batch mode. The performance of these MFCs with glucose, hydrolyzed potato peel and hydrolyzed cyanobacterial biomass substrates were comparatively evaluated. Among these substrates hydrolyzed cyanobacterial biomass was found to be the favorable substrate for electricity production whereas potato peel was unable to construct a well-established MFC. The maximum power density of 16.46 mW/m2 at 62.48mA/m2 was achieved using cyanobacterial mass as the substrate. A current density of 53.47mA/m2 appeared to characterize the maximum power produced from a polarization test was 5.85mW/m2 for glucose substrate.