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Electricity generation coupled to oxidation of propionate in a microbial fuel cell

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Abstract

Propionate was used as fuel to enrich an electrochemically-active microbial consortium in a microbial fuel cell, and the bacterial consortium was analyzed by culture-independent methods including denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of the 16S rDNA, and by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). MFCs fed with propionate produced a current of 4.88 ± 0.1 mA stably on 100 mg propionate/l as COD within 3 weeks of the enrichment. When the MFCs were fed with H2-saturated fuel containing propionate, the current dropped to 3.82 ± 0.07 mA. The maximum current generated was up to 8.8 mA when MFCs were fed with 200 mg propionate/l as COD. The DGGE of 16S rDNA showed that propionate-enriched MFCs have a different bacterial population from that enriched with acetate and from the inoculum used for enrichment. The major member (42%) of the consortium was an unidentified bacterium followed by γ, β, and δ-proteobacteria.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government” (KRF-2006-214-D00081), in which main calculations were performed by using the supercomputing resource of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI). This study was also partly supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) NRL program grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (No. R0A-2008-000-20088-0).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Environmental Engineering Division, National Institute of Agricultural Science, Rural Development Administration, Suwon, 441-707, Korea

    Jae Kyung Jang

  2. Department of Earth Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Jae Kyung Jang & Kenneth H. Nealson

  3. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, 500-712, Korea

    In Seop Chang

  4. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, 120-750, Korea

    Hwa Yeon Hwang & Kyung Suk Cho

  5. Water Environment and Remediation Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, 136-791, Korea

    Yeng Fung Choo, JiYoung Lee & Byung Hong Kim

  6. Division of Life Sciences, School of Life and Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University, Seoul, 136-701, Korea

    Byung Hong Kim

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  1. Jae Kyung Jang
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  2. In Seop Chang
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  6. Kyung Suk Cho
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  7. Byung Hong Kim
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  8. Kenneth H. Nealson
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Correspondence to Byung Hong Kim.

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Jang, J.K., Chang, I.S., Hwang, H.Y. et al. Electricity generation coupled to oxidation of propionate in a microbial fuel cell. Biotechnol Lett 32, 79–85 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-009-0118-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-009-0118-y

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