미생물 전기생합성을 위한 다공성 카본 전극 개발

Abstract

Microbial electrosynthesis (MES), which uses microbes to produce chemical compounds through electricity and carbon dioxide, has been identified as a new, clean way to produce chemical energy. To improve the efficiency of MES, it is important to develop supports that can contain many microbes and effectively transfer electrons to the microbes. In this study, we developed a fabrication method for three-dimensional porous carbon electrodes with pore sizes comparable to microbial sizes as an effective support for microbes. The carbon porous electrodes fabricated not only had good interconnections of micron-sized pores, but also large specific surface areas and low electrical resistances, relative to previous porous carbon electrodes made using conventional bubbling methods. We confirmed that microbes were attached well to the core part of the porous carbon electrodes. We believe that the development of porous carbon electrodes optimized for microbial attachment will benefit MES, significantly improving the performance of chemical conversion.