Microbial Fuel Cell

[deleted-136319]

Hi, I've been reading papers related to Microbial Fuel Cell for my project and I find out that there are many prior researches of MFC using anaerobes but there were only a few which uses aerobes in MFC. According to review article I'm reading, "Microbial Fuel Cells: novel biotechnology for energy generation" by Korneel Rabaey and Willy Verstraete, it says that MFC using aerobes yields high efficiency in energy generation but "various inhibitors" inhibits energy production. Are there anyone who knows what are "various inhibitors"?

(It seems like some of compounds in respiratory chain but I still don't know how these substances increase internal resistance or inhibits energy generation)

[Adean2001]

Hi, to give the full quote from the paper you site: "They observed that the generation of electrical current from an MFC was inhibited by various inhibitors of the respiratory chain." I would look up "respiratory chain inhibitors" and you should get a list. I did that and there were several links that came up (this is one): http://www.bmb.leeds.ac.uk/illingworth/ ... oisons.htm. I hope this is helpful. In Box 1 they also write this: "In a MFC no oxygen is present. ... For more information regarding bacterial energy conservation see [16]." If no oxygen is available in a MFC it doesn't make sense to use aerobes (they need oxygen to survive). They say that you should look up article [16] in order to get more information regarding bacterial energy conservation. Thauer, R.K. et al. (1977) Energy-conservation in chemotropic
anaerobic bacteria. Bacteriol. Rev. 41, 100–180. You can find the full text of this article at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 97/?page=1. This might give you a better understanding of how anaerobic bacteria function.

Also, I never found where they talk about aerobes yielding such high efficiency. They often talk about facultative aerobes, which are organisms that are anaerobic but can also grow in the presence of oxygen (http://quizlet.com/26893061/bacterial-g ... ash-cards/).

Good luck. Sounds like an interesting topic (one I'm not an expert in by any means). But, it sounds like you've taken some of the information from the article out of context and that's what's confusing you.