Effects of chaotic acclimation applied on performance of microbial fuel cells

ABSTRACT

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are one of the bioreactors that produce electrons by metabolizing substrate from microorganisms, and have the ability to both degrade waste solution and produce electrons. Recently, the activity of microorganisms has limited the power performance of MFCs. Chaos has been used to stimulate activity of microorganisms, but it has not been used previously in MFCs. In this study, three types of acclimations – native acclimation (NA), MFC acclimation (MFCA), and MFC embedded with chaotic electric field acclimation (CMFCA) – are applied to realize their performance and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal in MFCs, respectively. Results show that the current density and the power density of CMFCA were improved by 1.33 and 1.25 times than MFCA, and the COD removal of CMFCA reached 85% after five days. In addition, the acclimation stage at the condition of CMFCA appeared after 10 days, but was not found for the MFCA system. These observations would provide positive information for improving the performance of MCFs in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Bioreactor
• chaotic electric field
• microbial fuel cell
• microorganism
• power
• waste

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding support from NSC Taiwan under contract #NSC 102-2622-E-197-006-CC3, and the University of Malaya for the high impact research grant HIR-D000006-16001.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding support from NSC Taiwan under contract #NSC 102-2622-E-197-006-CC3, and the University of Malaya for the high impact research grant HIR-D000006-16001.