Sustainable Production of Biofuels and Biochemicals via Electro-Fermentation Technology.

The energy crisis and climate change are two of the most concerning issues for human beings nowadays. For that reason, the scientific community is focused on the search for alternative biofuels to conventional fossil fuels as well as the development of sustainable processes to develop a circular economy. Bioelectrochemical processes have been demonstrated to be useful for producing bioenergy and value-added products from several types of waste.

Impact of Inoculum Type on the Microbial Community and Power Performance of Urine-Fed Microbial Fuel Cells.

Bacteria are the driving force of the microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology, which benefits from their natural ability to degrade organic matter and generate electricity. The development of an efficient anodic biofilm has a significant impact on the power performance of this technology so it is essential to understand the effects of the inoculum nature on the anodic bacterial diversity and establish its relationship with the power performance of the system. Thus, this work aims at analysing the impact of 3 different types of inoculum: (i) stored urine, (ii) sludge and (iii) effluent from a working MFC, on the microbial community of the anodic biofilm and therefore on the power performance of urine-fed ceramic MFCs.

Urine in Bioelectrochemical Systems: An Overall Review.

In recent years, human urine has been successfully used as an electrolyte and organic substrate in bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) mainly due of its unique properties. Urine contains organic compounds that can be utilised as a fuel for energy recovery in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and it has high nutrient concentrations including nitrogen and phosphorous that can be concentrated and recovered in microbial electrosynthesis cells and microbial concentration cells. Moreover, human urine has high solution conductivity, which reduces the ohmic losses of these systems, improving BES output.

Long-term bio-power of ceramic microbial fuel cells in individual and stacked configurations.

In order to improve the potential of Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) as an applicable technology, the main challenge is to engineer practical systems for bioenergy production at larger scales and to test how the prototypes withstand the challenges occurring during the prolonged operation under constant feeding regime with real waste stream. This work presents the performance assessment of low-cost ceramic MFCs in the individual, stacked (modular) and modular cascade (3 modules) configurations during long term operation up to 19 months, utilising neat human urine as feedstock. During 1 year, the performance of the individual MFC units reached up to 1.