Effects of cathodic electron acceptors and potassium ferricyanide concentrations on the performance of microbial fuel cell

The effects of different cathodic electron acceptors and potassium ferricyanide concentrations on performance of a two-chambered microbial fuel cell (MFC) were studied. The MFC was operated in a batch mode, using enriched hydrogen-producing mixed bacteria as the anodic inoculum and artificial sucrose wastewater as the substrate. To find out the excellent electron acceptor for the two-chambered MFC, three MFCs using potassium ferricyanide catholyte sparged with air (M1), aerated catholyte (M2) and potassium ferricyanide catholyte (M3) were operated separately to elucidate the difference in power generation under similar anodic operating conditions (sucrose concentration 10.0 g/L). The results show that the power generation in M3 was slightly higher than that in M1, while both were much higher than that in M2. The effect of potassium ferricyanide concentrations in catholyte (pH 7.0, 100 mM phosphate buffer solution) on electricity generation characteristics was studied under constant anodic operational conditions. The maximum resultant MFC output power density (181.48 mW/m3) was produced using a potassium ferricyanide concentration of 0.1 M in the catholyte.