An air cathode, membrane-less microbial fuel cell (MFC) containing a co-culture of Geobacter sulfurreducens and Escherichia coli was constructed and compared to pure culture MFCs of both organisms. The E. coli containing MFCs were unsparged and relied on E. coli for oxygen removal. The pure G. sulfurreducens MFC had a power output of 128 mW/m2, compared to 63 mW/m2 for the co-culture at an early stage and 56 mW/m2 for the late stage co-culture. The limiting current density is 404 mA/m2 for the pure G. sulfurreducens culture, 184 mA/m2 for the early co-culture, and 282 mA/m2 for the late co-culture, despite an increase in internal resistance between the early and late co-culture cells. Analysis of metabolites has shown that succinate production is likely to have negatively affected current production by G. sulfurreducens, and the removal of succinate is responsible for the increased current density in the late co-culture cell.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/32530 |
| Date | 24 July 2012 |
| Creators | Bourdakos, Nicholas |
| Contributors | Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0024 seconds