Assessment of exoelectrogenic potential of microbial consortia of sewage sludge for bioelectricity generation
摘要
Over the past two centuries, the global reliance on fossil fuels has emerged as a threat to the ecosystem and escalating worldwide energy demand. This imminent scarcity of non-renewable energy sources is also contributing to climate change. The surge in sewage sludge, propelled by population growth, positions it as an ideal candidate for bioelectricity generation through microbial fuel cells. Microbial fuel cells were constructed with constant parameters such as pressure, pH at 7 and temperature of 37 °C. The electrodes area of 10.16 × 10.16 cm (H × W) and width and length of salt bridge was maintained as 0.9 × 15.24 cm. These setups contained raw sewage sludge as control with distilled water at cathode as set up1 and different combinations of raw sewage sludge + glucose, raw sewage sludge + methylene-blue, and raw sewage sludge + yeast in the anode chamber and modified cathode chamber were worked as setups 2–5. The cathode chamber is employed with combinations of distilled water and potassium permanganate. Both chambers were interconnected by a salt bridge composed of potassium chloride and agar, facilitating ion transfer to complete the pathway for electricity generation. The resulting outputs were precisely recorded in setups 1–5 as 0.9, 0.99, 1.02, 1.19 and 1.39 V with power output of 21.6, 24.75, 16.32, 17.85 and 19.46 W, respectively and maximum power density was obtained as 49.5 mW/m2. The results of this study with recorded values of voltage and current strongly endorse sewage sludge as a viable substrate for bioelectricity generation.