ENHANCING ELECTRICITY GENERATION USING FUNGAL LACCASE-BASED MICROBIAL FUEL CELL

Abstract

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are very important source to obtain green electricity and also for decontamination of waste water. Bioelectricity yield from biofuel cells is still needed for maximizing. Microbial laccases, especially those produced by fungi, are currently considered to be one of the most promising biocatalyst for bioelectricity production and also purification of water from the different pollutant, especially phenolic compounds. In the present work, different electrolyte solutions used in anode and cathode chambers to evaluate efficiency of each to produce voltage & current and also to prove that using economical electrolytes, which were agro-industrial waste called el-ghasheem at anode and only tap water at cathode, achieve good results in comparison with other commonly used electrolytes which were glucose, sodium nitrate, mono-potassium phosphate, di-potassium phosphate, ammonium chloride and magnesium sulfate. The use of El-ghasheem in the economic MFC showed power improvement results when fungal laccase, produced from Monodictys castaneae fungus, had been used as cathodic reaction catalyst to increase voltage production from 0.466±0.003 V to 0.807±0.002 V and current from 0.025±0.003 A to 0.09±0.003 A at 37 °C, anolyte pH 6 and catholyte pH 5 for 10 days incubation period. It was noticed that this laccase enzyme had the 98.38±0.264 % phenol removal activity from anode chamber through indirect effect and 99.69±0.276 % phenol removal activity from cathode chamber through direct effect when El-ghasheem was used as the organic fuel at the anode side. In this study using unstudied agro-industrial waste, Electricity was produced by the new fungal laccase which showed the high performance in electricity production enhancement and also phenol compounds removal through low cost MFC.