Monday, July 27, 2009
P12

Bioelectricity Generation from Carbon Monoxide via Consolidated Bioprocess: Combination of Acetogenic Fermentation and Microbial Fuel Cells

Daehee Kim1, Junyeong An2, and In Seop Chang1. (1) Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), 261 Cheomdan-gwagiro, Buk-gu, Gwangju, South Korea, (2) Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Gwnagju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), 261 Cheomdan-gwagiro, Buk-gu, Gwangju, South Korea

Gasification of coal and biomass produces synthesis gas (syn-gas) which is mainly consisted of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Syn-gas can be used to produce value-added chemicals by the chemical technology, Fischer-Tropsch process; or may used to produce electricity by conventional fuel cells. However, due to the irreversible poisoning of catalysts, syn-gas should be purified to remove sulfur compounds and/or CO. This serious drawback is simply able to be overcome by microbiological processes. It has been reported that microorganisms such as acetogens can be used to convert CO as one of the major components of syn-gas to multi-carbon compounds in anaerobic condition, and sulfur compounds decrease the redox potential to keep media anoxic. The major product of acetogenesis is an acetic acid, and our previous researches verified that it can be converted to electricity by microbial fuel cell (MFC). Therefore, we combined CO fermentation and MFC technology to harvest electricity from CO. Successful operation of the combined process confirmed that microbes are able to generate electricity from CO. However, the conversion yield from CO to electricity was ca. 2.32%. It was mainly due to low coulombic yield of MFC (ca. 5.03%). Therefore, we developed MFC part to generate electricity at high efficient. We were able to increase the coulombic yield up to 65% at MFC part. Our results imply that the microbial process does not require gas purification step to eliminate CO and sulfur prior to be used as fuel and is capable of direct electrical energy.

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