화학공학소재연구정보센터
Bioresource Technology, Vol.145, 271-274, 2013
Membraneless microfluidic microbial fuel cell for rapid detection of electrochemical activity of microorganism
A membraneless microfluidic microbial fuel cell (mu MFC) for rapid detection of microorganism electroactivity is demonstrated in this study. Owing to the merit of laminar flow, the proposed mu MFC has well-separated anode and cathode without applying proton exchange membrane. The highest open circuit voltages (OCVs) produced by different anodal solutions: fresh medium, inactivated and untreated microflora, were 102, 131, and 246 mV, respectively. These results show that the membraneless mu MFC is capable of identifying the electric potential resulting from the imbalanced compositions between two streams (29 mV) and from the electrochemical activity of microflora (115 mV). When samples obtained along a batch cycle of H-type MFC were tested, the membraneless mu MFC produced similar OCVs with those from the H-type MFC. In conclusion, the proposed mu MFC has comparable abilities in detecting electroactivity with the conventional H-type MFC; moreover, it can distinguish the source of collected electricity. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.