Anodic Bio-Electrochemical Process of Sodic-Saline Micro flora for Microbial Fuel Cells

Abstract

A microbial consortium was sampled from a sodic-saline soil, due to their high saline nature. Interestingly, an anode-respiring bacterium was reaping at the -150 mV vs SCE from the sodic-saline soil. The focus of this study was to identify the extra cellular electron transfer process in the anode. The cyclic voltammetry experiments, conducted that direct electron transfer was achieved through the membrane bound cytochrome and excreted soluble cytochrome by the micro-flora. There midpoint potentials were -385 mV and 18 mV vs SCE, respectively. Further, this was confirmed by protein estimation, SDS-PAGE electrophoresis, and UV-Vis spectrometer. The supernatant solution from the single chamber microbial fuel cell (SCMFC) contains 363 µg/ml of protein and ~45 kDa molecular weight, deduced from SDS-PAGE analysis. UV-Vis spectrophotometer results exhibited the oxidized form of cytochrome at 410 nm. All these experiments reveals the cytochrome (membrane bound/ soluble excreted) played a vital role in the direct electron transfer in the SCMFC, seeded with sodic-saline inocula.