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Electroosmotically generated disinfectant from urine as a by-product of electricity in microbial fuel cell for the inactivation of pathogenic species

Gajda, Iwona; Obata, Oluwatosin; Greenman, John; Ieropoulos, Ioannis A.

Authors

Iwona Serruys Iwona.Gajda@uwe.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Engineering Management

Oluwatosin Obata

Yannis Ieropoulos Ioannis2.Ieropoulos@uwe.ac.uk
Professor in Bioenergy & Director of B-B



Abstract

This work presents a small scale and low cost ceramic based microbial fuel cell, utilising human urine into electricity, while producing clean catholyte into an initially empty cathode chamber through the process of electro-osmostic drag. It is the first time that the catholyte obtained as a by-product of electricity generation from urine was transparent in colour and reached pH>13 with high ionic conductivity values. The catholyte was collected and used ex situ as a killing agent for the inactivation of a pathogenic species such as Salmonella typhimurium, using a luminometer assay. Results showed that the catholyte solutions were efficacious in the inactivation of the pathogen organism even when diluted up to 1:10, resulting in more than 5 log-fold reduction in 4 min. Long-term impact of the catholyte on the pathogen killing was evaluated by plating Salmonella typhimurium on agar plates and showed that the catholyte possesses a long-term killing efficacy and continued to inhibit pathogen growth for 10 days.

Citation

Gajda, I., Obata, O., Greenman, J., & Ieropoulos, I. A. (2020). Electroosmotically generated disinfectant from urine as a by-product of electricity in microbial fuel cell for the inactivation of pathogenic species. Scientific Reports, 10, Article 5533. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60626-x

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 14, 2020
Online Publication Date Mar 26, 2020
Publication Date Mar 26, 2020
Deposit Date Mar 28, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Scientific Reports
Electronic ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher Nature Research (part of Springer Nature)
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 10
Article Number 5533
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60626-x
Keywords Multidisciplinary
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5820424
Publisher URL https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60626-x

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Electroosmotically generated disinfectant from urine as a byproduct of electricity in microbial fuel cell for the inactivation of pathogenic species (3.8 Mb)
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Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or
format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
© The Author(s) 2020







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