| 초록 |
A microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a device that converts chemical energy to electrical energy by the catalytic reaction of microorganisms. Using the MFC, researchers have produced electricity from various organic compounds. Recently the utilization of marine biomass as a feedstock for bioenergy production is being investigated worldwide. Among them, a macro red seaweed, Gelidium sp., is known to have high content of carbohydrates. Thus agar power derived from the red seaweed was used to evaluate its potentiality as a feedstock for electricity production using MFC. Chemically, agar consists of a mixture of agarose and agaropectin, whose monomeric unit is mostly galactose. To saccharify agar into soluble monosaccharides, acid saccharification method incorporated with autoclaving was used in this study. To begin with, the effects of acid type, acid concentration, autoclave temperature and time were examined individually. A response surface methodology was appled to find the optimum condition for agar saccharification using each acid. Eventually, optimum saccharification method was determined in the viewpoint of electricity production using MFC. |
