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External resistance acclimation regulates bio-anode: new perspective from biofilm structure and its correlation with anode performance

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Abstract

External resistance is important for the anode and cell performance. However, little attentions were paid on the effect of external resistance on the variation of biofilm structure. Here, we used external resistance ranged from 4000 to 500 Ω for anodic acclimation to investigate the correlation between anode performance and biofilm structure. With the reduce of external resistance, the maximum current density of anode increased from 1.0 to 3.4 A/m2, which was resulted from a comprehensive effect of reduced charge transfer resistance and increased diffusion resistance. Biological analysis showed that with the reduce of external resistance, biomass and extracellular polymeric substances content increased by 109 and 286%, cell viability increased by 22.7%, which contributed to the reduced charge transfer resistance. But the porosity of anodic biofilm decreased by 27.8%, which led to an increased diffusion resistance of H+. This work provided a clear correlation between the electrochemical performance and biofilm structure.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 52070162, 51778562) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFA0901300).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy, Department of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, People’s Republic of China

    Jiawei Yang & Shaoan Cheng

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  1. Jiawei Yang
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Correspondence to Shaoan Cheng.

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Yang, J., Cheng, S. External resistance acclimation regulates bio-anode: new perspective from biofilm structure and its correlation with anode performance. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 45, 269–277 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-021-02658-9

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