Archaea-based Microbial Fuel Cell Operating at High Ionic Strength Conditions

Abstract: In this work two archaea microorganisms (Haloferax volcanii and Natrialba magadii) used as biocatalyst at a microbial fuel cell (MFC) anode were evaluated. Both archaea are able to grow at high salt concentrations. By increasing the media conductivity, the internal resistance was diminished, improving the MFCs performance. Without any added redox mediator, maximum power (Pmax) and current at Pmax were 11.87 / 4.57 / 0.12 {\mu}W cm-2 and 49.67 / 22.03 / 0.59 {\mu}A cm-2 for H. volcanii, N. magadii and E. coli, respectively. When neutral red was used as redox mediator, Pmax was 50.98 and 5.39 {\mu}W cm-2 for H. volcanii and N. magadii respectively. In this paper an archaea MFC is described and compared with other MFC systems; the high salt concentration assayed here, comparable with that used in Pt-catalyzed alkaline hydrogen fuel cells will open new options when MFC scaling-up is the objective, necessary for practical applications.