Electricity generation coupled to oxidation of propionate in a microbial fuel cell

Jae Kyung Jang, In Seop Chang, Hwa Yeon Hwang, Yeng Fung Choo, Ji Young Lee, Kyung Suk Cho, Byung Hong Kim, Kenneth H. Nealson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

Propionate was used as fuel to enrich an electrochemically-active microbial consortium in a microbial fuel cell, and the bacterial consortium was analyzed by culture-independent methods including denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of the 16S rDNA, and by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). MFCs fed with propionate produced a current of 4.88 ± 0.1 mA stably on 100 mg propionate/l as COD within 3 weeks of the enrichment. When the MFCs were fed with H2-saturated fuel containing propionate, the current dropped to 3.82 ± 0.07 mA. The maximum current generated was up to 8.8 mA when MFCs were fed with 200 mg propionate/l as COD. The DGGE of 16S rDNA showed that propionate-enriched MFCs have a different bacterial population from that enriched with acetate and from the inoculum used for enrichment. The major member (42%) of the consortium was an unidentified bacterium followed by γ, β, and δ-proteobacteria.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)79-85
Number of pages7
JournalBiotechnology Letters
Volume32
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2010

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgements This study was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government’’ (KRF-2006-214-D00081), in which main calculations were performed by using the supercomputing resource of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI). This study was also partly supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) NRL program grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (No. R0A-2008-000-20088-0).

Keywords

  • 16S rDNA
  • Bacterial community
  • Electricity generation
  • Microbial fuel cell (MFC)
  • Propionate

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