The electrode potential determines the yield coefficients of early-stage Geobacter sulfurreducens biofilm anodes

Abstract Geobacter sulfurreducens is the model for electroactive microorganisms (EAM). EAM can use solid state terminal electron acceptors (TEA) including anodes via extracellular electron transfer (EET). Yield coefficients relate the produced cell number or biomass to the oxidized substrate or the reduced TEA. These data are not yet sufficiently available for EAM growing at anodes. Thus, this study provides information about kinetics as well as yield coefficients of early-stage G. sulfurreducens biofilms using anodes as TEA at the potentials of −200 mV, 0 mV and +200 mV (vs. Ag/AgCl sat. KCl). The selected microorganism was therefore cultivated in single and double chamber batch reactors on graphite or AuPd anodes. Interestingly, whereas the lag time and maximum current density within 12 days of growth differed, the anode potential does not influence the coulombic efficiency and the formal potential of the EET, which remains constant for all the experiments at ~ −300 to −350 mV. We demonstrated for the first time that the anode potential has a strong influence on single cell yield coefficients which ranged from 2.69 × 1012 cells mole-−1 at −200 mV and 1.48 × 1012 cells mole-−1 at 0 mV to 2.58 × 1011 cells mole-−1 at +200 mV in single chamber reactors and from 1.15 × 1012 cells mole-−1 at −200 mV to 8.98× 1011 cells mole-−1 at 0 mV in double chamber reactors. This data can be useful for optimization and scaling-up of primary microbial electrochemical technologies.