[Development of a low cost single chamber microbial fuel cell type BOD sensor]
The principle of the detector is based on the effect of microbial toxicity of water sample on the electricity generation in microbial fuel cell (MFC) The performance of the MFC type biotoxicity detector was evaluated with the synthetic water containing heavy metals of Cd2+ and Cu2+ The experimental results demonstrated that: (1) relative to the conventional methods, the MFC type detector is easy to operate, and suitable for on line measurements with high sensitivity; (2) it only requires 4 h to complete measurements, and can get ready for next measurement within 4 h; (3) there is a significant linear correlation between the concentration of toxic metal(s) and inhibition ratios in Coulombic yields of MFC. As the IC20 (concentration causing 20% inhibition) of Cd2+ Cu2+ and mixed metals (Cd2+ and Cu2+ were 0.6, 0.8 and 0.25 mg/L, the regression coefficients were shown to be 0.9960, 0.9744 and 0.9907.
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