CEE Seminar: Critical Transport Rates that Govern the Overall Performance of Microbial Electrochemistry Technologies

Microbial electrochemistry technologies (METs) take advantage of the connection of microorganisms with electrodes, wherein the electrodes are used as electron donors or acceptors by the microorganisms or are used as a method to control conditions within biological reactors. Potential applications of METs include resource recovery from wastewater, synthesis of commodity chemicals, control of and product separations in biological processes, among many others. In most cases of METs, the overarching performance goal is to achieve high current densities, with low overpotentials, which translates to high rates of end-product formation with low energy input or high energy output. The performance of METs is dependent on many transport processes occurring, which can be rate-limiting, depending on MET function.....