Microbial Electrochemical Platform: Biofactory with Diverse Applications
Microbial electrochemical technologies (MET) have significant potential to negate the impending energy, and renewable feedstock crisis. METs have evolved into a sustainable and eco-friendly solutions owing to their diverse applications like microbial fuel
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Abstract Microbial electrochemical technologies (MET) have significant potential to negate the impending energy, and renewable feedstock crisis. METs have evolved into a sustainable and eco-friendly solutions owing to their diverse applications like microbial fuel cell (MFC), for power generation, bioelectrochemical treatment (BET) for wastewater remeduiation, microbial desalination cell (MDC) for salt removal and resource recovery, microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) for the production of Hydrogen by applying external potential and bioelectrochemical syntheis (BES) for value-added products production and other applications such as plant microbial fuel cells (P-MFC) and artificially constructed wetlands fuel cells (CW-MFC) utilize the root exudates for power generation, biosensor applications, etc. This chapter draws light upon the multifaceted application of MET and their specific operational mechanism along with their futuristic integrations and developmental models.
Keywords Electro-fermentation Bioelectrochemical treatment (BET) Microbial fuel cell (MFC) Microbial desalination cell (MDC)
1 Introduction Microbial catalyzed electrochemical systems (MES) are multi-disciplinary hybrid systems emerging as a potential platform with multi-facet applications. Exo-electrogens has become an increasingly important platform for the production of biofuels and chemicals from renewable resources [22, 77, 78]. Microbes are effective cleavers of organic substrate to generate electrons and protons. Few microbes are
S. Venkata Mohan (&) G. Velvizhi P. Chiranjeevi Bioengineering and Environmental Science (BEES), CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT), Hyderabad 500 007, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 A.K. Agarwal et al. (eds.), Biofuels, Green Energy and Technology, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3791-7_3
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able to transport electrons beyond their cell boundaries and thereby, electrically interacting with the external environment creating a specific niche to be developed into an advanced bio-processes by harnessing these electrons with the insertion of the electrodes [37]. Bacteria–electrode interactions exchange the electrons and uses for wider applications such as bioelectricity, wastewater treatment, production of value-added products etc. Research has been originally initiated for harvesting power from microbial fuel cell (MFC) taking advantage of biocatalyst metabolic function. Then, MES nurtured and fragmented into various processes which increased the scope in utilizing the reducing equivalents (electrons and protons) for the remediation of wastewater as bio-electrochemical treatment (BET) [75, 76] and desalinating salt water as microbial desalination cell (MDC) [51], supplying external energy in addition to in situ potential for the production of hydrogen as microbial electro-synthesis cell (MEC) [77] and synthesis of value-added products as bioelectrochemical systems (BES) [44]. Other applications like utilizing root of plant
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