Decolorization of Congo red in Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract In this research, three individual conditions (static, shaking and MFC) were tested for Congo Red decolorization. P.aeruginosa MTCC 2582 has showed 96.1% decolourization under MFC condition with 85% COD reduction for the dye (100 µM). Microbial fuel cell of P.aeruginosa can discharge the dual duty of degrading the recalcitrant dye with power generation. To understand the influence the growth curve, different substrate concentration of glucose (0-20 g/L) were selected to improve the performance of MFC. Results show that a larger open circuit potential of 0.691 V and a maximum power density of 1.9 mW m-2 was possessed for the degradation of 100 µM of dye at 10 g/L of glucose concentration. Further, the selection of optimum concentration of dye (200 µM) increased the open circuit potential to 0.844 V. The degraded metabolites were confirmed using UV-Vis and FTIR analysis. Biofilm formation on anode at optimal glucose concentration was studied by using SEM analysis.