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http://dx.doi.org/10.4014/jmb.1412.12067

Determination of Microbial Growth by Protein Assay in an Air-Cathode Single Chamber Microbial Fuel Cell  

Li, Na (Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Kyung Hee University)
Kakarla, Ramesh (Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Kyung Hee University)
Moon, Jung Mi (Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Kyung Hee University)
Min, Booki (Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Kyung Hee University)
Publication Information
Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology / v.25, no.7, 2015 , pp. 1114-1118 More about this Journal
Abstract
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have gathered attention as a novel bioenergy technology to simultaneously treat wastewater with less sludge production than the conventional activated sludge system. In two different operations of the MFC and aerobic process, microbial growth was determined by the protein assay method and their biomass yields using real wastewater were compared. The biomass yield on the anode electrode of the MFC was 0.02 g-COD-cell/gCOD-substrate and the anolyte planktonic biomass was 0.14 g-COD-cell/g-COD-substrate. An MFC without anode electrode resulted in the biomass yield of 0.07 ± 0.03 g-COD-cell/g-CODsubstrate, suggesting that oxygen diffusion from the cathode possibly supported the microbial growth. In a comparative test, the biomass yield under aerobic environment was 0.46 ± 0.07 g-COD-cell/g-COD-substrate, which was about 3 times higher than the total biomass value in the MFC operation.
Keywords
Microbial fuel cell; aerobic process; biomass yield; microbial growth; wastewater;
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