Study the relationship between bacterial growth, Congo red dye removal and voltage production using single chamber microbial fuel cell

Abstract

In this work single chamber microbial fuel cell (SCMFC) incorporating agar salt bridge pipe were used to investigate the interaction mechanisms between bacterial growth, Congo red decolorization, and bioelectricity generation. After 20 days of SCMFC operation in a batch test using a mixture of Congo red (CR) and sucrose as fuel, graphite plates electrodes, temperature 32ºC and under anaerobic working condition results showed that 98% decoloraization at dye concentration 300 mg\\l demonstrated at UV-Visible Spectrophotometer ( wavelength 500 nm) and maximum voltage output of approximately 263.9 mv. Microbial community analysis showed the high species of bacteria Shigella dysenteria and Salmonella sp. (23×109 and 19×109 Count CFU/mL respectively). The bacterial growth activates start to decrease due to substrate reduction for metabolic process and pH automatically dropping from 8.2 to 6.9 as a result of the reaction. This study offered a feasible option for the dye wastewater treatment and electricity generation by using single chamber microbial fuel cells.