Sediment microbial fuel cell prefers to degrade organic chemicals with higher polarity

Chunyu Xia, Meiying Xu, Jin Liu, Jun Guo, Yonggang Yang

Abstract

By operating a SMFC in heavily contaminated sediment and analyzing its global organic chemical degradation profile, this study showed a brief trend that SMFC prefers to stimulate the degradation of organic chemicals with higher polarity. As a comparison, adding nitrate as a microbial respiration-based sediment remediation strategy preferred lower polarity chemicals. Both SMFC and nitrate reactors showed high degradation capacity in benzene homologs. These results provide crucial information for the selective and proper application of SMFC in bioremediation.

Keywords: Microbial fuel cells; Bioremediation; Sediment; Organic chemical.