Citation:

Gao, Y., H. Ryu, B. Rittmann, A. Hussain, AND H. Lee. Quantification of the methane concentration using anaerobic oxidation of methane coupled to extracellular electron transfer. Bioresource Technology. Elsevier Online, New York, NY, 241:979-984, (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2017.06.053

Impact/Purpose:

Microbial electrochemical (MxC) systems have shown a lot of promise in removing contaminants during the wastewater treatment process, and also for energy production. This was a proof of concept study on the feasibility of using MxC as a methane sensor. This work is the first to prove that MxCs can measure methane concentrations, which is an essential step for monitoring methane-emission potential in an efficient and sustainable manner. This work is intended for researchers and practitioners in the wastewater treatment and resource recovery fields.

Description:

A biofilm anode acclimated with acetate, acetate+methane, and methane growth media for over three years produced a steady current density of 1.6-2.3 mA/m^2 in a microbial electrochemical cell (MxC) fed with methane as the sole electron donor. Geobacter was the dominant genus for the bacterial domain (93%) in the biofilm anode, while methanogens (Methanocorpusculum labreanum and Methanosaeta concilii) accounted for 82% of the total archaeal clones in the biofilm. A fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) image clearly showed a biofilm of bacteria and archaea, supporting a syntrophic interaction between them for performing anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) in the biofilm anode. Measured cumulative coulombs correlated linearly to the methane-gas concentration in the range of 10% to 99.97% (R^2 ≥ 0.99) when the measurement was sustained for at least 50 min. Thus, cumulative coulombs over 50 min. could be used to quantify the methane concentration in gas samples.

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