Harvesting electricity from agrowaste using biofuel cell /
The present work studies a microbial zinc-air cell which utilizes Phanerochaete chrysosporium white rot fungus as the laccase producing microbes. Laccase enzyme serves as the biocatalyst for the reduction of oxygen from the ambient air. The cell is essentially a single chamber, membraneless design a...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Kuala Lumpur :
Kulliyyah of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia,
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Click here to view 1st 24 pages of the thesis. Members can view fulltext at the specified PCs in the library. |
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| Summary: | The present work studies a microbial zinc-air cell which utilizes Phanerochaete chrysosporium white rot fungus as the laccase producing microbes. Laccase enzyme serves as the biocatalyst for the reduction of oxygen from the ambient air. The cell is essentially a single chamber, membraneless design and employs the freely suspended Phanerochaete chrysosporium inoculums. The fungi inoculums are grown by submerged fermentation in Potato Dextrose Broth (PDB) with glucose as their organic substrate. The microbial zinc-air cell is assembled by dipping a zinc foil and a commercial air electrode (EFL Ltd.) into a 250 ml Scot bottle containing the liquid culture after a predetermined incubation period. The presence of extra cellular laccase in the liquid culture is affirmed via the detection of the 275 nm absorbance peak of the HPLC. Laccase content reached a maximum upon 14 days of incubation period. The microbial zinc-air cell is characterized in uncontrolled ambient surrounding. The cell possesses an open circuit voltage of around 1.2 V and could deliver a maximum power of 1.13 mW at discharge load of 1.7 mA. The cell could sustain a discharge current of 1 mA for 12 days continuously at working voltage of 0.4 V. As the white rot fungi typically feed on lignocellulosic biomass, Phanerochaete chrysosporium inoculums are also cultured in PDB with OPEFB as the organic substrate and subsequently employed in the zinc-air cell. Although the discharge capacity was only one third of that obtained from the cell employing glucose as the organic substrate, the cell employing OPEFB is capable to generate 1 mA of continuous discharge for 100 hours. The substantial performance drop of the cell is attributed to the fact that OPEFB is a much complex organic substrate than glucose. |
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| Physical Description: | xiv, 81 leaves : illustrations ; 30cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-81). |