Generation of Electricity from Waste Using Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

Environmental issues related to energy and waste, are the two biggest problems which cannot be overlooked. There is mismanagement of waste which is causing irreversible damage to the environment. For energy, there is still very much dependency on non-renewable sources. The demand of energy is such that, there is a need to promote energy production from renewable sources. These two environmental concerns can be handled in one go by Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC). MFC is a device which converts chemical energy from organic matter directly into electrical energy using microorganisms as catalyst. newlineIn this study, two chambered MFC was constructed and validated using artificial wastewater. Anaerobically digested distillery wastewater (ADDW) is the wastewater generated after biogas formation was used to extract further energy using endogenous microflora. Mixed consortia over isolated colonies showed generation of electricity from ADDW. Effect of various parameters like surface area of electrodes, pH of feed, aeration at cathode, resistance and concentration of antifoam were studied. Increase in bubble formation is known to increase the electrical resistance and hence study of effect of antifoam was thought to be important. The optimization of MFC was performed using Box-Behnken Design. Surface area of cathode of 18.42 cm2, pH of 8.3, resistance of 1000 and#937; without addition of antifoam and aeration at cathode were found to be optimum. Surface area of anode showed linear increase in the power generation from 6.14 cm2 to 55.26 cm2. The power output of optimized MFC was amplified by keeping 4 MFCs in series, which could generate about 2.1 V and sufficient to glow LED. newline