comparison of sediment microbial fuel cell performance with and without sediment autoclaving

Sediment microbial fuel cells (smfcs) are novel technologies for renewable energy production and sediment bioremediation. recently, several studies have been performed on smfcs because of their unique potential and ability to use a wide range of biodegradable substrates such as river sediment, marine sediment, and wastewater for electricity generation. in this study, the effect of sediment sterilization using autoclave followed by adding initial microorganisms to the sediment on smfc performance was evaluated. the pretreated and the control, without sediment pretreatment, smfcs produced power densities of 8.91 and 7.31 mw m-2, respectively.