Massaglia, G.; Spisni, G.; Pirri, C.F.; Quaglio, M. Microbial Fuel Cells as Effective Tools for Energy Recovery and Antibiotic Detection in Water and Food. Micromachines2023, 14, 2137.
Massaglia, G.; Spisni, G.; Pirri, C.F.; Quaglio, M. Microbial Fuel Cells as Effective Tools for Energy Recovery and Antibiotic Detection in Water and Food. Micromachines 2023, 14, 2137.
Massaglia, G.; Spisni, G.; Pirri, C.F.; Quaglio, M. Microbial Fuel Cells as Effective Tools for Energy Recovery and Antibiotic Detection in Water and Food. Micromachines2023, 14, 2137.
Massaglia, G.; Spisni, G.; Pirri, C.F.; Quaglio, M. Microbial Fuel Cells as Effective Tools for Energy Recovery and Antibiotic Detection in Water and Food. Micromachines 2023, 14, 2137.
Abstract
This work demonstrates that microbial fuel cells (MFCs), optimized for energy recovery, can be used as an effective tool to detect the presence of antibiotics in water-based environments. MFCs directly convert chemical energy of organic matter in electrical energy thanks to electroactive biofilms. The efficiency of the conversion process can be significantly affected by the presence of contaminants acting as toxicants for the biofilm. In the present work, we demonstrate that MFCs can successfully detect the presence of antibiotic residues in water and water-based electrolytes associated to the food industry, especially using honey as a new and more complex electron donor. The effectiveness of MFCs to sense antibiotics is here demonstrated for tetracycline that was added to both water and water/honey electrolytes with a minimum concentration close to 3.5 μg⁄kg. MFCs not only efficiently detect the presence of tetracycline in both the electrolytes, but also recover the same performance after each cycle of exposure, showing to a be very robust and reliable technology for both biosensing and energy recovery.
Keywords
microbial fuel cells; energy recovery; biosensors; bio-electrochemical sensors; Antibiotic contamination
Subject
Physical Sciences, Applied Physics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
