I have tried having the house hold waste material in a separate reactor where decomposition takes place (with sodium hydrogen carbonate to take care of the pH) and then move the resultant organic acids into the MFC by peristalsis pump and the MFC must have another outlet as waste
I think you may be hindering the system by removing the organic acids. The successful fuel cells I have seen use only one container with 2 compartments that are separated by a permeable membrane: 1) Contains waste, Sodium bicarbonate or pH buffer, and anode. 2) Contains water (so salts and hydrogen can equilibrate across the membrane) and the cathode.
In most wastewater systems, there is an "assembly line" of bacterial degradation of large organic compounds. Once they are broken down to the organic acids, the next metabolic step in the assembly line is the one which releases hydrogen and electrons that drive your MFC. However, this last step of the metabolic process involving organic acid conversion is community-dependent and is driven by the other microorganisms in the system that continue to produce organic acids. The upstream production of O.A. thermodynamically drives the enzymes in the downstream organisms to degrade the O.A..
Therefore, I imagine that your system is not thermodynamically favorable since the microbes are isolated for organic acid conversion away from the rest of the consortia. I strongly suggest allowing the ENTIRE microbial degradation process to take place in one container with the anode - unless of course, you are working with barrels of waste, in which case the thermodynamics will change a bit.
Without knowing the scale of your reactor, it's hard for me to say much more.
Dear Owen Rubaba and Cassandra Kotter... Thank u vey much for ur suggestions. I would like to request Dr. Cassandra Kotter to kindly provide me some research papers or web links related to the subject. I shall b grateful to u Dr. Cassandra Kotter if u kindly help me. M gonna start my work from 26th December onward. Your help and suggestions will be appreciated in our future publications.
A few sites have descirptions and bibliography you could look at…
You can check
http://www.microbialfuelcell.org
http://www.genomenviron.org/Research/MFC.html
Bruce Logan has nice clear useful instructions on his lab page: http://www.engr.psu.edu/ce/enve/logan/bioenergy/research_mfc.htm
Check it out at instructables.com and search in that u will be finding an easy way
Please ,visit Bruce Logan's lab page:
http://www.engr.psu.edu/ce/enve/logan/bioenergy/research_mec.htm
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