| description |
The present study aims at gaining knowledge on how the start-up process influences the microbial communities that develop on the biofilm of biocathodes. This is done by assessing the impact of the microbial diversity of the inoculum and the starting potential of the bioelectrode. For this purpose, we tested a highly diverse inoculum such as river mud (RM), and a more specialised one such as anaerobic digestate (AD). We also evaluated the impact of the starting potential by either operating the working electrode as an anode and then switching it to cathode, or directly operating the working electrode as a cathode. This approach resulted in four different start-up strategies, and for all of them, we provide an analysis of the evolution of microbial communities together with information of the reactor performance (in terms of current production and product formation). |