Development of Effective Electrodes and Electricity Generation in Continuous Microbial Fuel Cell using Poultry Wastewater

Abstract

The Microbial Fuel Cell was designed for batch and continuous operations and the electrodes were developed using a simple and effective technique known as phase inversion. The different combinations of electrodes were used in the experiment to get the maximum power output and organic matter removal. The poultry wastewater was used as substrate and was comparatively studied with Luria Bertani (LB) solution. The best combination of electrode was found to be the graphite rods as anode and composite catalyst material (Graphite: PbO2: MnO2 = 1:1:2) coated on Stainless Steel mesh as cathode. The electrode combination gives maximum power output and organic matter removal for both batch and continuous process. The maximum voltage and power density obtained by using poultry wastewater was 1018 mV and 51.2 mW/m2, respectively. The maximum COD and TOC reduction was 58% and 41.39%, respectively.
Keywords: Continuous microbial fuel cells; Poultry wastewater; Escherichia coli; Nafion membrane; Electrode