A cathode-shared microbial fuel cell sensor array for water alert system

Abstract

The use of biosensors for water alert system is critical for providing safe water to the general public. A cathode-shared microbial fuel cell (MFC) sensor array was designed improve the detection credibility by eliminating the cathode performance variation, based on the principle that only the bioanode would be used as the sensing and transducing element. Four integrated MFCs exhibited high parallelism, and independence without the cross contamination or electric signal interference. Two linear ranges were observed (from 0.25 to 0.75 mM and from 1 to 10 mM) for acetate detection. A linear relationship between inhibition ratio (IR) and Cu 2+ concentration from 2 to 6 mg/L was recorded. The sensor expressed an immediate voltage decrease when exposed to a pH decrease from 6 to 4. The compact design of the cathode-shared MFC sensor array assure the detection credibility, and the number of the integrated MFC sensors is alterable based on the monitoring requirement.

Bio-analytical applications of microbial fuel cell-based biosensors for onsite water quality monitoring

“…The delay in response time can be tackled by the optimization of MFC sensors in terms of structure and components (Jiang et al . ).…”

“…), d: Cathode‐shared MFC array with four anode chambers (Jiang et al . ), e: Single chamber MFC (Liu et al . a) and f: Dual sensing element (Jiang et al .…”

“…Nevertheless, there is a delay in response of MFC sensors and measuring sensitivity is hard to guarantee, depending on the alteration of environmental conditions. The delay in response time can be tackled by the optimization of MFC sensors in terms of structure and components (Jiang et al 2017c).…”

“…Stacked MFC setups were also tested as a biosensor to improve monitoring of toxicants in water (Jiang et al 2017c). A cathode-array based MFC sensor was developed to improve detection sensitivity by mitigating the variation of cathode performance, according to the concept that only the bioanode can sense and be used directly as a transducer element (Jiang et al 2017c). A four MFCbased array was tested with different contents of Cu 2+ to evaluate its performance.…”

Novel Applications of Microbial Fuel Cells in Sensors and Biosensors

“…As a result, one of the approaches to increase the power output of MFCs relates to the connection of several MFCs in series or in parallel [55]. As a case in point, Jiang et al recently developed a remote biosensor based on MFCs placed in parallel, for an alert system to prevent the use of a harmful water stream [56]. The sensor was designed with a cathode-shared integrating four MFCs, based on the principle that only the bioanode would be used as the sensing and transducing element.…”