Microbial fuel cell-based toxicity sensor

Abstract

The increase in energy consumption also increases the damage to the environment and the toxicity of water still is one of the main problems in the world. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are one of the alternative energy sources. The study demonstrates the possibility to use yeast as a probe to assess redox and electrophile-based toxicities and to extend the life of a MFCs. But as it is known, the quinones cause the oxidative stress of the cells. That is why the main aim of our research was to create a real-time biomonitoring system using MFCs to detect the concentration of quinones in solution, using one and two redox mediator’s systems. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to analyse the topography of the modified and non-modified graphite electrode and Potentiostat/Galvanostat Autolab PGSTAT 30 was used for the electrochemical measurements, which results are described in this paper.