The disposal of the solid organic waste presents a serious problem facing modern society. The annual production of the municipal solid wastes (MSW) in the United States is nearly 250 million tons. The organic fraction of the MSW renders it a suitable feedstock in bioelectrochemical application designed for production of DC power output from organic wastes at room temperature. This study provides interesting findings on the application of graphene (Gr) coated nickel electrodes in bioelectrochemical applications. Mixed microbial populations were used to test two galvanic cells with identical experimental conditions except for the type of the anode material: i) nickel, and ii) graphene-coated nickel.  The preliminary results were carried out by using fermentable glucose as electron donor, and ferricyanide as the electron acceptor.  The conventional nickel anodes are susceptible to microbial corrosion encountered in typical galvanic conditions encountered in bioelectrochemical applications. This study demonstrates the utility of graphene for passivating microbially-induced corrosion of porous nickel anode used in this study. These results provide exciting opportunity to use Gr-based metals as electrodes in microbial fuel cells. In general, the EEC analysis quantifies the solution resistance (Rel) in Gr-based Fuel cell and Ni-based Fuel cell as 0.07, 0.37 kO.cm2 respectively. The charge transfer resistance in each galvanic cell was atleast two orders of magnitude higher than ohmic resistance. The excellent corrosion resistance of graphene coating can be inferred by the fact that the value of charge transfer resistance in Gr-FC (35.8 kO.cm2) was forty fold higher than that in Ni-FC (0.86  kO.cm2)

Innovative graphene electrodes for treatment of organic wastes at room temperature

247th National Meeting (2014)

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