A biofilm anode acclimated with acetate, acetate+methane, and methane growth media for over three years produced a steady current density of 1.6-2.3 mA/m^2 in a microbial electrochemical cell (MxC) fed with methane as the sole electron donor. Geobacter was the dominant genus for the bacterial domain (93%) in the biofilm anode, while methanogens (Methanocorpusculum labreanum and Methanosaeta concilii) accounted for 82% of the total archaeal clones in the biofilm. A fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) image clearly showed a biofilm of bacteria and archaea, supporting a syntrophic interaction between them for performing anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) in the biofilm anode. Measured cumulative coulombs correlated linearly to the methane-gas concentration in the range of 10% to 99.97% (R^2 ≥ 0.99) when the measurement was sustained for at least 50 min. Thus, cumulative coulombs over 50 min. could be used to quantify the methane concentration in gas samples.

This dataset is associated with the following publication: Gao, Y., H. Ryu, B. Rittmann, A. Hussain, and H. Lee. Quantification of the methane concentration using anaerobic oxidation of methane coupled to extracellular electron transfer. Bioresource Technology. Elsevier Online, New York, NY, USA, 241: 979-984, (2017).