Engineering Commons^™

The Effects Of Volatile Fatty Acids On The Performance Of Microbial Electrolysis Cells, Nan Yang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study investigated the performance of microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) fed with three common fermentation products: acetate, butyrate, and propionate. Each substrate was fed to the reactor for three consecutive-batch cycles. The results showed high current densities for acetate, but low current densities for butyrate and propionate (maximum values were 6.0 ± 0.28, 2.5 ± 0.06, 1.6 ± 0.14 A/m², respectively). Acetate also showed a higher coulombic efficiency of 87 ± 5.7 % compared to 72 ± 2.0 and 51 ± 6.4 % for butyrate and propionate, respectively. This paper also revealed that acetate could be easily oxidized …