• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.213-217
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• 2009

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have been known as a new alternative energy conversion technology for treating wastewater and producing electricity simultaneously. A MFC converts the chemical energy of the organic compounds to electrical energy through microbial catalysis at the anode under anaerobic conditions. To examine the performance of MFC, in this work, the characteristics of the efficiency of wastewater treatment and generation of electricity was evaluated for sewage. When acetate as a carbon source was added into the sewage, the removal efficiency of COD was increased from 75.7% to 88.2% and the voltage was increased significantly from 0.22 V to 0.4 V. The influence of distance between anode and cathode was examined and the effect of the surface area of anode was investigated under the various external resistances. It was found that the maximum power density was $610mW/m^2$ and power generation was effective when the distance between the electrodes was shorter and the surface area of the anode was smaller.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.486-491
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• 2022

A benthic microbial fuel cell (BMFC) is an eco-friendly energy conversion device that uses electricity generated by benthic microorganisms decomposing organic matter in the mud of the sea or lake. In this study, in order to understand how domestic wastewater flowing into tidal flats affects the performance of BMFC. BMFC performance was compared and reviewed by fermenting organic substances in food and mixing them with tidal flats. Performance of the BMFC was improved by 49% by adding fermented food rich in vitamins (B₂, B₆, B₁₂, C, D, E) and soft flour. The maximum power density increased as the amount of fermented organic matter increased, and it was shown that the fermented organic matter fermented during 25~29 days was optimal for BMFC.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.25-33
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• 2019

Operating characteristics of a 30 L microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) for producing biogas from sewage sludge was studied. During the 32-day inoculation period, carbon dioxide concentration decreased and methane concentration increased with operating time, and the overall methane content of biogas was 69.1% with a production rate of 171.6 mL CH₄/L·d. In fed-batch experiments for 6 operating cycles, CH₄ concentration of 66.5~77.2% was obtained at a production rate of 184.9~372.9 mL CH₄/L·d, COD, TS and VS removal efficiency ranged from 28.2 to 42.1%, 20.7 to 37.5% and 18.5 to 36.9%, respectively. The MEC system was observed to be stabilized as operating cycles were repeated after inoculation. In the last operating cycle, 5221 mL/L of methane was produced with CH₄ yield of 316.7 L CH₄/kg COD_rem, and the energy recovery was 73%.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.172-176
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• 2019

A benthic microbial fuel cells(BMFC) is fuel cell using electricity produced by decomposing organic matter in a sea or a lake. In this study, we used a gas diffusion layer (GDL) of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEMFC) as a BMFC electrode to find out the operation conditions with high performance. The performance of BMFC was increased as resistance of external resistor increased. It was possible to maintain the performance by avoiding the increase of the contact resistance with the electrode due to corrosion of the lead wire in seawater. The bubble generator was able to increase the maximum power density by more than 2 times and the optimum operating temperature was $40^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.758-763
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• 2014

Soil microbial fuel cells (SMFC) have gained a great attention as an eco-friendly technology that can simultaneously generate electricity and treat organic pollutants from the contaminated soil. We evaluated the effect of electrode spacing and size on the performance of SMFC treating soil contaminated with organic pollutants. Maximum power density decreased with increase in electrode distance or decrease in electrode size, likely due to higher internal resistance. The maximum voltage and power density decreased from 326 mV and $19.5mW/m^2$ with 4 cm of electrode distance to 222 mV and $5.9mW/m^2$ with 9 cm of electrode distance. In case of electrode size test, the maximum voltage and power density generated was 291 mV, $0.34mW/m^3$ when both of anode and cathode area were $64cm^2$ with 4 cm of electrode distance. The maximum voltage decreased by 19~29% when the anode area decreased to $16cm^2$ while only 3~12% of voltage decreased with cathode area decrease. The maximum power density decreased by 49~68% with decreasing anode size, and by 29~47% with decreasing cathode size. These results showed that the anode area had more significant effects than the cathode area on the power generation of SMFC which has a high internal resistance due to a coexistence of soil and wastewater in the reactor.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.529-536
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• 2008

Cyanobacteria Synechocystis PCC 6803 or the extracted thylakoid membrane from this strain was appled to photosynthetic bio-electrochemical fuel cell(PBEFC) for the production of hydrogen under the illumination of 48Klux using halogen lamp. PBEFC was composed of anode, cathode and membrane between them. Electrode material was carbon paper while electron mediator and receptor were added phenazine methosulfate(PMS) and potassium ferricyanide respectively. When water and 50 mM tricine buffer and $300{\mu}M$ PMS were added to the anode under the light condition, PBEFC produced the current density $4.4{\times}10^{-5}\;mA/cm^2$, $1.4{\times}10^{-4}\;mA/cm^2$ and $2.4{\times}10^{-4}\;mA/cm^2$, respectively. And the addition of the thylakoid membrane to the system increased current density to $1.3{\times}10^{-3}\;mA/cm^2$. Two times increase of the thylakoid membrane into the anode doubled the current density to $2.6{\times}10^{-3}\;mA/cm^2$. But the current density was not increased proportionally to the amount of thylakoid membrane increased. The system was unstable to measure the electricity output due to the foam production in the anode. Addition of triton X-100 and tween 80 stabilized the system to measure the electricity output but the current density was not increased higher than $8.4{\times}10^{-4}\;mA/cm^2$ and $2.3{\times}10^{-3}\;mA/cm^2$. When the thylakoid membrane was substituted to Synechocystis PCC 6803 cells of four-day culture which has chlorophyll contents $20.5{\mu}g/m{\ell}$, maximum current density was $1.3{\times}10^{-3}\;mA/cm^2$ with $1\;k{\Omega}$ resistance.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.53-61
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• 2018

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is one of the most widely used process that can convert the organic fraction of waste activated sludge (WAS) into biogas. However, most researched actual methane yields of anaerobic digester (AD) on lab scale is lower than theoretical ones. Bioelectrochemical, anaerobic digester was used to increase methane yield from waste activated sludge. The influence of anaerobic digestion sludge and raw sludge mixing ratio (3:7, 5:5) on methane yield and organic matter removal efficiency were explored. As a result, when the mixing ratio of bioelectrochemical anaerobic sludge was 5:5 compared with 3:7, the highest methane yields were 294.2 mL $CH_4/L$ (0.63 times increase) and 52.5% (7.5% increase), the bioelectrochemical anaerobic digester(5:5) was more stable in the pH, t otal alkalinity and VFAs, respectively. These results showed that the increase in the mixing ratio of anaerobic digestion sludge was found to be effective for maintaining the stable performance of bioelectrochemical anaerobic digester.