Investigation of electricity production performance from algal biomass with different pretreatment techniques in microbial fuel cell

In this thesis, the effect of pretreatment applied to algal biomass on performance of electricity production in a single-chamber microbial fuel cell (MFC) was investigated. MFC technology provides both waste treatment and energy generation from waste streams. With this purpose, it was studied the performance of electricity generation by appliying the pretreatments of H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroksit) and UV (Ultraviole) to algal biomass. Different H2O2 dosages in the range of 5-30 ml/L were added to algal biomass to be used in microbial fuel cell and the results obtained from pretreatment applications were compared with those from the control MFC reactor in which no pretreatment method was applied. Power density in the control reactor was generated to be 41.16 mW/m2. The power density values increased to 244.64 mW/m2 and 234.55 mW/m2 at H2O2 dosages of 25 and 30 ml/L, respectively, while it was 178.57 mW/m2 at H2O2 dosage of 5 ml/L. The maximum power density was obtained in the MFC reactor with 25 ml/L H2O2 dosage. Also, the power densities from algal biomass with UV (254 nm) pretreatment were studied at contact times in the range of 30-90 min. However, in the case of pretreatment that UV was singly applied, all the power densities obtained in MFC reactors with UV pretreatment were lower than the value in control reactor without pretreatment. The results showed that the H2O2 pretreatment that is a chemical method was more efficient relatively than UV pretreatment that is a physical method, and UV could not be applied alone as a pretreatment to algal biomass.