Saccharomyces cerevisiae as biocatalyst in Microbial Desalination Cell (MDC) for desalination sea water

Abstract

Nowadays, many research on energy production have been  intensively developed.  MFCs are known as green technology is a new opportunity for the sustainable production of energy by converting chemical energy to electrical energy by biodegradation using microorganisms as biocatalysts. In our present work Power production from biofuel cell was coupled with a desalination process in electrodialysis based microbial desalination cell (MDC).    We propose a new method of desalination process through microbial fuel cell and as ssimultaneously  we demonstrated  that yeast fuel cell can serve as viable option for integrated energy production and removed salt ion through desalination. Baker’s yeast Sacharomyces cereviceae  as biocatalyst has been pepared in the anolyte.  whereas K₃Fe(CN)₆ was used as electron acceptor  in the catholyte.  Chronoamperometry has been selected as method to determination of the MFC operational characteristics. Several conditions to optimize current and power density of the MFC and MDC have been observed.   The effect of yeast preparation,  nature and toxicity  of exogenous mediator and  time of  yeast storage  have been characterized and  prepared  for application to desalination. The effect of yeast preparation  could achieve enhancement of  power output around 40%, meanwhile methylene blue and neutral red  were selected as mediator  for electrons transfer and applicable for the living cell.  The maximum current density produced by the cell was 92.5 mA.m^-2 and in those conditions it was found that concentration of salt was removed 83% from initial 0.6 M after 1 month operation. This result evidence that yeast fuel cells can be applied to remove salt through electrically driven membrane processes and demonstrated that could be applied for energy supply in MDC. Further developments are in progress to improve performance and power output to make yeast fuel cells applicable  as one of promising biotechnology  for desalination and water treatment