| Title |
Characteristics of Power Generation and Organic Matter Removal in Air-Cathode MFC with respect to Microbial Concentration |
| Authors |
김도영 ( Do Young Kim ) ; 임종수 ( Bong Su Lim ) ; 최찬수 ( Chan Soo Choi ) ; 김대현 ( Dae Hyun Kim ) |
| Keywords |
Air-Cathode MFC; Microbial fuel cell; Power generation; Seeding microbial concentration |
| Abstract |
In order to improve applicability of a microbial fuel cell the laboratory-scale study has been performed by adopting an air-cathode MFC system with high concentrated anaerobic slugies in this study. The concentrations of microbes are grouped into three types, Type A (TS 1.7%), Type B (TS 1.1%) and Type C (TS 0.51%). The open circuit voltage (Voc) characteristics showed that the medium microbes concentration of 1.10% (Type B) kept a constant voltage of 1.0 V for 150 hours, which showed the longest time among three types (Type A and Type C). The discharge charge curves for a closed circuit with 500 Ω also showed that Type B generated a stable discharge voltage of 0.8 V for a longer time as in the open circuit voltage case. This could be explained by the relatively large amount of the attached microbes. Under the Voc condition the COD removal efficiency of Type B was found to be low for a long time, but those of Type A and C were found to be high for a short period of time. Therefore, the suspended microbes could decrease the coulombic efficiency. It was concluded that the high Voc was caused by low COD and the Voc became low after the COD removal. The COD reduction resulted in an unstable and low working voltage. From the polarization characteristics Type A was found to show the highest power density of 193 mW/m2 with a fill factor of 0.127 due to the relatively high remaining COD even after the MFC reaction. |