Journal
PROCESSES
Volume 9, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/pr9030417
Keywords
single-chamber reactor; electrofermentation; applied voltage; mixed microbial cultures; butyric acid
Categories
Funding
- RES URBIS (RESources from URban BIo-waSte) Project [730349]
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In MMC-EF process, utilizing low-cost graphite electrodes can enhance the production rate of butyric acid, although it may increase specific energy consumption. Controlling the voltage can regulate MMC-based bioprocesses effectively.
Mixed microbial culture (MMC) electrofermentation (EF) represents a promising tool to drive metabolic pathways toward the production of a specific compound. Here, the MMC-EF process has been exploited to obtain butyric acid in simplified membrane-less reactors operated by applying a difference of potential between two low-cost graphite electrodes. Ten values of voltage difference, from -0.60 V to -1.5 V, have been tested and compared with the experiment under open circuit potential (OCP). In all the tested conditions, an enhancement in the production rate of butyric acid (from a synthetic mixture of glucose, acetate, and ethanol) was observed, ranging from 1.3- to 2.7-fold relative to the OCP. Smaller enhancements in the production rate resulted in higher values of the calculated specific energy consumption. However, at all applied voltages, a low flow of current was detected in the one-chamber reactors, accounting for an average value of approximately -100 mu A. These results hold a substantial potential with respect to the scalability of the electrofermentation technology, since they pinpoint the possibility to control MMC-based bioprocesses by simply inserting polarized electrodes into traditional fermenters.
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