Electro-Fermentation in Aid of Bioenergy and Biopolymers

Prasun Kumar, Kuppam Chandrasekhar, Archana Kumari, Ezhaveni Sathiyamoorthi and Beom Soo Kim
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Prasun Kumar: Department of Chemical Engineering, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Chungbuk 28644, Korea
Kuppam Chandrasekhar: Department of Civil Engineering, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk 38451, Korea
Archana Kumari: Department of Biotechnology, Bodoland University, Kokrajhar, Assam 783370, India
Ezhaveni Sathiyamoorthi: Department of Chemical Engineering, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Chungbuk 28644, Korea
Beom Soo Kim: Department of Chemical Engineering, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Chungbuk 28644, Korea

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-20

Abstract: The soaring levels of industrialization and rapid progress towards urbanization across the world have elevated the demand for energy besides generating a massive amount of waste. The latter is responsible for poisoning the ecosystem in an exponential manner, owing to the hazardous and toxic chemicals released by them. In the past few decades, there has been a paradigm shift from “waste to wealth”, keeping the value of high organic content available in the wastes of biological origin. The most practiced processes are that of anaerobic digestion, leading to the production of methane. However; such bioconversion has limited net energy yields. Industrial fermentation targeting value-added bioproducts such as—H 2 , butanediols; polyhydroxyalkanoates, citric acid, vitamins, enzymes, etc. from biowastes/lignocellulosic substrates have been planned to flourish in a multi-step process or as a “Biorefinery”. Electro-fermentation (EF) is one such technology that has attracted much interest due to its ability to boost the microbial metabolism through extracellular electron transfer during fermentation. It has been studied on various acetogens and methanogens, where the enhancement in the biogas yield reached up to 2-fold. EF holds the potential to be used with complex organic materials, leading to the biosynthesis of value-added products at an industrial scale.

Keywords: electro-fermentation; hydrogen; electricity; methane; microbial fuel cells; polyhydroxyalkanoates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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