First air-tolerant effective stainless steel microbial anode obtained from a natural marine biofilm

Benjamin Erable (1) , Alain Bergel (1)

1 LGC - Laboratoire de Génie Chimique

Microbial anodes were constructed with stainless steel electrodes under constant polarisation. The seawater medium was inoculated with a natural biofilm scraped from harbour equipment. This procedure led to efficient microbial anodes providing up to 4 A/m2 for 10 mM acetate oxidation at −0.1 V/SCE. The whole current was due to the presence of biofilm on the electrode surface, without any significant involvement of the abiotic oxidation of sulphide or soluble metabolites. Using a natural biofilm as inoculum ensured almost optimal performance of the biofilm anode as soon as it was set up; the procedure also proved able to form biofilms in fully aerated media, which provided up to 0.7 A/m2. The current density was finally raised to 8.2 A per square meter projected surface area using a stainless steel grid. The inoculating procedure used here combined with the control of the potential revealed, for the first time, stainless steel as a very competitive material for forming bioanodes with natural microbial consortia.

Mots clés: Electrochemically active biofilm; Marine biofilm; Stainless steel; Microbial fuel cell; Bioanode

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie; Microbiologie et Parasitologie

Benjamin Erable, Alain Bergel. First air-tolerant effective stainless steel microbial anode obtained from a natural marine biofilm. Bioresource Technology, 2009, vol. 100 (n°13), pp. 3302-3307. ⟨10.1016/j.biortech.2009.02.025⟩. ⟨hal-03573354⟩