Short-stay at INRA-LBE (Narbonne, France) with Dr. Nicolas Bernet and Dr. Alessandro Carmona-Martínez

From 28/01 to 08/02/2013 I was at the INRA-LBE of Narbonne (France) under the supervision of Dr. Nicolas Bernet and Dr. Alessandro Carmona-Martínez. The reason of this short stay was to improve our knowledge on the electrochemical characterization of a Bioelectrochemical System (BES).

The stay was focused on the use of Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) to characterize a BES: Which are the key parameters that must be taken into account? How data should be treated? Which information can be extracted from a Cyclic Voltammetry?

Not only CV experiments were performed, but also other voltammetric techniques as Direct Pulse Voltammetry (DPV) and Square-Wave Voltammetry (SWV) were used. These techniques are more sensible than CV, which allow them to be promising techniques to characterize low-active microorganisms.

Moreover, I had the opportunity to see which methodology is used in INRA-LBE to characterize electroactive microorganisms.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge to Dr.Nicolas Bernet and Dr. Alessandro Carmona-Martinez to give me the opportunity of visiting their laboratory. It was a great experience and I hope that this stay could be the first step for a further collaboration.