Bioelectric Activity of Microbial Fuel Cell during Treatment of Old Corrugated Containerboard Discharges

The bioelectric activity of two lab scale microbial fuel cell (MFC) designs, MFCI (1,500 cm(3)) and MFCII (12,000 cm(3)) were examined using old corrugated containerboard (OCC) discharge for simultaneous effective treatment with greater power production. The decrease of MFC internal resistance (MFC-R-in) resulted in increased generated power output. The different parameters used in MFC included electrode conducting area (ECA), cathodic redox solution (CRS), MFC volume capacity, and MFCs connections. The generated current densities (CD) and power densities output (PD) at variables of external resistances (R-ex) that ranged from 10 Omega to 20,000 Omega were calculated to estimate the MFC-R-in. In MFCI, using potassium ferri-cyanide as CRS, the change of ECA from 16 cm(2) to 64 cm(2) decreased the MFCI-R-in from 130 Omega to 110 Omega, and it was further decreased to 65 Omega when manganese dioxide was used as the CRS. Using R-ex 100 Omega, MFCII exhibited lower R-in 18.46%, enhanced voltage 37.5%, and greater chemical oxygen demand removal 4.77% compared with MFCI. Series and parallel connections between four MFCI increased the generated PD by 286% and 258%, respectively, compared with that obtained by single MFCI.