Download Family Name: Sharma First Name: Mohita Title of the thesis

Family Name:
First Name:
Title of the thesis
Sharma
Mohita
Sulphate reducing bacteria based biocathode for bioelectrochemical
systems
Supervisors
Dr. Priyangshu M Sarma
Co-supervisor
Dr Banwari Lal
Affiliations
a. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), IHC, Lodhi Road,
New Delhi 110003, India
b. TERI University, Institutional Area, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi
110070, India
Thesis description: Rising demand of water and limited fresh water sources made it imperative to treat
and recycle discharged water streams both from an environmental and sustainability perspective.
Bioelectrochemical system (BES) is one such technology for treating wastewater streams, and additionally
useful for electrosynthesis of value-added products from discarded waste suspended in water streams. The
key hypothesis of the present study was to check if the metabolic flexibility of sulphate reducing bacteria
(SRB) capable of reduction of sulphate to sulphides can be replaced by reduction of organics to value
added products using SRB based biocathode in BES. Screening of 62 samples collected from different sites
across India was performed. A robust, electroactive SRB based consortium, TERI-MS-003 was developed
and characterized using fluorescent in situ hybridization and 16S rDNA sequencing procedure. A series of
experiments were performed to intensively study the biocathode capabilities and metabolic route of the
electroactive biocathode developed using TERI-MS-003. High cathodic current densities were successfully
achieved for driving bioelectrochemical conversions. It becomes essential to select the correct electrode
material for development of robust biocathodes. For this, seven different carbon based electrode materials
were comparatively evaluated for their physicochemical and bioelectrochemical response. Two electrode
materials were shortlisted to further tune the operational conditions of the BES by studying the impact of
altering selected operational parameters on the performance of the cell. SRB based biocathode was found
to bioelectrochemically synthesise value added products as well help in the treatment of wastewater
streams successfully.