Oil & Gas Research
Open Access

Bioelectricity As A Green Technology: Study Of Bioelectricity Generation Potential Of A Domestic Waste Water Based Microbial Fuel Cell

Copyright: © 2020  . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) utilizes active microorganisms
as biocatalysts in an anaerobic anode compartment
to produce bioelectricity. The present study records the
bioelectricity generation potential of domestic waste water,
basically rice washed water as the anolyte and a pure
culture of cyanobacteria as the catholyte. Graphite electrodes
(4 cm2) were inserted into both compartments.
Anode compartment was filled with 1 liter of rice washed
water from household and sealed. The cathode compartment
was filled with pure culture of Microcystis sp.
cultured under laboratory conditions. Both electrodes
were connected to a 0.33Ω external resistor. The control
setup of the MFC was maintained using distilled water
as the catholyte. Physico-chemical parameters such as
Nitrate, Nitrite and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD)
and Orthophosphate concentrations of the rice water
sample was measured in both experimental and control
setups. In addition the voltage generated at each sampling
time was recorded in both setups and subsequently
current, power density, current density were calculated.
Water treatment efficiencies were recorded as Reduction
of COD by 23.37%, N-Nitrate by 61.02%, N-Nitrite by
55.14% and Orthophosphate by 20.06%. The optical
density of cathode increased by 11.4%. While control setup
did not show a significant reduction. The maximum
voltage generated by the MFC was 730± 0.85mV with a
current of 2181.82 mA. Maximum current densities and
power densities were 1472.21 mAcm-2 and 1059.99 mW
m-2 respectively. Therefore, the laboratory scale MFC
employed in this study could be effective used in treating
domestic waste water while using as a source of bioelectricity.

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