Catalytic effect of acetate (C2H3O2) on coulombic efficiency and bio-electricity generation from wastewater sample prepared from domestic kitchen waste using dual chamber microbial fuel cell technology

In recent times, the use of energy resources, particularly non-renewable resources, have increased manifolds due to the ever-increasing global demands. This has led to an increase in depletion of the resources and environmental pollution. Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) are a new concept that has proved to be the solution to the problem as a green energy resource. The paper focuses on generating electricity from wastewater prepared from kitchen wet waste kept for about 168 hours in an attempt to address the energy crisis while also treating it. A comparative analysis of the sample as prepared and with acetate has been studied and power generation, coulombic efficiency and change in chemical oxygen demand (COD) for wastewater were calculated and also the catalytic effect of acetate was analyzed. It was observed that there was a substantial increase in coulombic efficiency and COD content . A coulombic Efficiency efficiency of 25.29% was obtained for the sample with acetate, whereas, without acetate it was calculated as 9.71%. The maximum power density was obtained from the polarization curves. It was observed that the maximum power density of pure kitchen wastewater was found to be 0.017 mW/m2; however, for kitchen wastewater with acetate, the power density increased considerably to 0.546 mW/m2 at an external resistance of 1Kῼ. Further, the maximum current densities observed were 2.239 mA/m2 and 8.771 mA/m2, respectively. The internal resistance of the constructed prototypes was also determined using the maximum power transfer theorem. In this study, a prototype was constructed and it was found that kitchen waste can be used as a source of electricity generation and leads to a green energy initiative.