Fade to Green: A Biodegradable Stack of Microbial Fuel Cells

Abstract

The focus of this study is the development of biodegradable microbial fuel cells (MFCs) able to produce useful power. Reactors with an 8 mL chamber volume were designed using all biodegradable products: polylactic acid for the frames, natural rubber as the cation‐exchange membrane and egg‐based, open‐to‐air cathodes coated with a lanolin gas diffusion layer. Forty MFCs were operated in various configurations. When fed with urine, the biodegradable stack was able to power appliances and was still operational after six months. One useful application for this truly sustainable MFC technology includes onboard power supplies for biodegradable robotic systems. After operation in remote ecological locations, these could degrade harmlessly into the surroundings to leave no trace when the mission is complete.

Urine transduction to usable energy: A modular MFC approach for smartphone and remote system charging

“…The technology's intrinsic characteristics are, low power -compared to established technologies, wide range of organic matter (otherwise considered as waste) can be used as fuel, low fiscal and maintenance costs, stacking of MFC collectives required for exploitable power levels and durability with robustness. Over the last three decades, research in the field has focused on (i) improving the power density of individual units [2,3], (ii) reducing the cost of each unit [4][5][6], (iii) assembling units into stacks to reach exploitable power [7,8], (iv) widening the range of potential fuels [9][10][11], and (v) demonstrating the implementation of this biotechnology into practical applications [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The results we present here focus on the latter aspect.…”

Comprehensive Study on Ceramic Membranes for Low‐Cost Microbial Fuel Cells

“…[9] An interesting approacht or educe the cost of MFCs is to build the anode chamber in such aw ay that the membrane becomes the structuralm aterial of the cell. [10] Such an approach can be used with porous ceramic materials, which so far have been rarely reported as the membranes in MFCs.…”

Here today, gone tomorrow: biodegradable soft robots

“…Biodegradation of these polymers (natural rubber and gelatine) has been shown in [16] and Figure 4 shows a typical biodegradation test. Here collagen coupons were left to degrade in garden compost.…”

“…Natural rubber has proven to be a viable substitute to conventional membranes over long term operation where the act of biodegradation actually aided performance [22]. Other materials such as paper [16], egg, gelatine, PLA and lanolin have all demonstrated their suitability as viable working components in MFCs [23]. The culmination of that work was the production of a stack of biodegradable MFCs capable of generating usable power, whilst utilising waste liquid such as urine as the fuel source.…”