Bioelectricity Production from Fermentable Household Waste in a Dual-Chamber Microbial Fuel Cell

The use of a Microbial fuel cell (MFC) was studied as an alternative novel solution to convert a Food Residue Biomass (FORBI) product into Bioelectricity. FORBI was produced by drying and shredding the pre-sorted fermentable fraction of household food waste collected door-to-door in the Municipality of Halandri. In this study, the possibility of bioelectricity production from a FORBI extract was investigated in an MFC. Different organic loading rates (OLR) (0.7, 0.9, 1.4, 2.8, 6 g COD/L) were examined. It was observed that the increase of the initial concentration of the final extract resulted in a corresponding increase in the operating time. The best performance of the cell was observed at the highest concentration of the final extract tested (6 g COD/L) corresponding to a maximum power density (normalized to the geometric area of the anodic electrode, which was 21.6 cm2) of approximately 30 mW/m2 corresponding to a current density of 88 mA/m2. The results demonstrate that readily biodegradable substrates such as FORBI can be effectively used for enhanced bioelectricity harvesting in an MFC.