The The Use of Copper and Aluminum Electrodes for Energy Production in a Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

Microbial fuel cell is a device that uses the microorganism metabolism for the production of electricity under specific operating conditions. Double chamber microbial fuel cell was tested for the use of two cheap electrode materials copper and aluminum for the production of electricity under different operating conditions. The investigated conditions were concentration of microorganism (yeast) (0.5- 2 g/l), solutions temperature (33-45 oC) and concentration of glucose as a substrate (1.5- 6 g/l). The results demonstrated that copper electrode exhibit good performance while the performance of aluminum is poor. The electricity is generated with and without the addition of substrate. Addition of glucose substrate up to 3 g/l increased the produced current but with further increase of the amount of substrate, the current generated decreases. The optimum temperature for electricity production was found to be 36 oC.

Keywords

• microbial fuel cell; copper electrode; aluminum; yeast; glucose substrate