Abstract
The Tomato industry in the United States generates similar to 40 million metric tons of pomace waste on an annual basis. Here, we demonstrate the use of pomace as the feedstock for electricity production in a microbial fuel cell (MFC). The putative redox-active compounds and the particulate characteristic of the pomace influenced the temporal dynamics of polarization, impedance, and voltammetry response of pomace-MFCs (pMFC). While the open-circuit potential of pMFC was similar to its glucose-control, the polarization response of pMFC (125 W m(-2) and 500 mA m(-2)) was inferior to its glucose-control (290 W m(2) and 1300 mA m(-2)), and this difference increased with increasing scales of current density and time. The pomace oxidation was associated with a redox-active mediator that undergoes a quasi-reversible reaction at higher potential (E-p = 0 V vs Ag/Agcl); its charge transfer impedance appeared as a distinct time constant in the mid-frequency region during AC electrical impedance spectroscopy analysis. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
