Power generation from pre-treated empty fruit bunch using single chamber microbial fuel cell

Abstract

The utilization of lignocellulosic biomass (LB) as the substrate in Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) have been receive growing interest due to the vast amount of abundant LB side-product that are generated yearly from agriculture field. In this paper the author will be discussing the utilization of Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB), which is one of the LB waste generated from palm oil industry in single chamber MFC (SCMFC) to generate bioelectricity. The microbes used in this study were equivalent volume mixtures of Gram-positive Bacillus E1 and Clostridium cellulolyticum (CC). To enhance the efficiency of the microbes to utilize the EFB for bioelectricity generation, the EFB used were pre-treated first with several pre-treatment method which include physical pre-treatment, hot water pre-treatment and alkaline pre-treatment. Different amount of EFB were tested which include 1.5 g, 3.5 g and 5.5 g of EFB under similar condition with total working volume of 250 mL for anode chamber. Resistor of range 100-100,000 O was connected to the MFC to calculate the current and power generated from the system. Results indicate maximum power was achieved at the value of up to 0.7 W/m2 at above 1.0 A/m2.for all pre-treated EFB tested. The highest power was achieved at 100 O using lower concentration of EFB with a value of 0.678 W/m2. In conclusion, EFB is a feasible substrate for MFC and more studies on improvement of the power generation in progress for larger scale application.