Bioaugmentation for Electricity Generation from Corn Stover Biomass Using Microbial Fuel Cells

Abstract

Corn stover is usually treated by an energy-intensive or expensive process to extract sugars for bioenergy production. However, it is possible to directly generate electricity from corn stover in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) through the addition of microbial consortia specifically acclimated for biomass breakdown. A mixed culture that was developed to have a high saccharification rate with corn stover was added to single-chamber, air-cathode MFCs acclimated for power production using glucose. The MFC produced a maximum power of 331 mW/m2 with the bioaugmented mixed culture and corn stover, compared to 510 mW/m2 using glucose. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) showed the communities continued to evolve on both the anode and corn stover biomass over 60 days, with several bacteria identified including Rhodopseudomonas palustris. The use of residual solids from the steam exploded corn stover produced 8% more power (406 mW/m2) than the raw corn stover. These results show that it is possible to directly generate electricity from waste corn stover in MFCs through bioaugmentation using naturally occurring bacteria.

Evolving Microbial Communities in Cellulose-Fed Microbial Fuel Cell

“…When these two processes ran in the same reactor simultaneously, the communities were dominated by Clostridium sp. and no representatives of Deltaproteobacteria were found [15,18,19].…”

“…However, oxygen diffusion through the air cathode can adversely affect power production by anaerobic microorganisms, and the infusion of oxygen can alter bacterial communities compared to completely anaerobic systems. For example, only 2-10 mW/m 2 was obtained for an air-cathode single-chamber MFC fed with corn stover, inoculated with domestic wastewater [19]. The power production was increased to 475 mW/m 2 when a more readily biodegradable substrate (diluted hydrolysate of corn stover) was used as the substrate as oxygen could be more effectively scavenged using this substrate [20].…”

Examination of a Culturable Microbial Population from the Gastrointestinal Tract of the Wood-Eating Loricariid Catfish Panaque nigrolineatus

“…Expanding our BLAST analyses to include environmental and uncultured samples we found many sequences having high similarity (>99% identity) to those recovered from cellulose-rich environments. These included phylotypes similar to Clostridium intestinale (KC000027 and KC000090), Eubacterium contortum (KC000010), and Cloacibacterium normanse (KC000079), which were identified in corn-stover bioreactors [59], cow feces cellulose enrichment cultures (Accession No. GQ920790), and termite guts (Accession No.…”

Bioelectrochemical systems for efficient recalcitrant wastes treatment

“…49,50 Similarly, lignocellulosic biomass such as Canna indica, corn stover and wheat straw containing multiple polymers of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin can also be degraded at the bioanode, although degradation extent was only around 22-61% and power output was comparatively low. 51,52 Pretreatment of this lignocellulosic biomass through a dilute-acid pre-treatment and subsequent acid-or enzymatic hydrolysis processes can improve the biodegradability and bioavailability of this waste in bioanodic MFCs. 51,53 On the other hand, using the hydrolysis of grass silage in anaerobic digestion can achieve COD removal of 90%, total phenolics removal of 30-75%, and electricity generation of 31-56 W m −3 , illustrating the possibility of combining anaerobic digestion with MFC technology for energy recovery and recalcitrant lignocellulosic biomass treatment.…”