Electricity generation using an anaerobic fluidized bed microbial fuel cell
厌氧流化床微生物燃料电池处理废水的产电特性

An anaerobic fluidized bed microbial fuel cell (MFC) (40 mm in diameter and 600 mm in height), was employed to investigate the effect of the fluidization parameters on the electrogenesis capacity of the MFC. Waste water and active carbon were used as liquid and solid phase, respectively. The fuel cell was started up successfully using anaerobic activated sludge as inoculum. In this test, the initial generating voltage approached 200 mV, sharply increased after 80 h, and 700~900 mV was obtained after 100 h or longer. The polarization curve and power density-current curve indicate that the power density increased with the increasing of circulating liquid velocity in the fixed bed MFC. The vertex power density reached 220 mW·m-3 when the active carbon was fluidized in the MFC, which was 120 mW·m-3 in the fixed bed. A series of experiments demonstrated that the electrogenesis capacity improved in the fluidized bed MFC over the packed bed MFC, which is attributed to the improved mass transfer and the increased reaction rate in the fluidized bed MFC.