Microbial Fuel Cells, Features and Developments

Abstract

Current reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable due to pollution and finite supplies. Microbial cell factories serve as promising alternatives renewable energy resources. Microorganisms generate electricity in their metabolism; act as catalysts for converting the chemical energy into electricity. In Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC), electrons provided by microorganisms flow through an electrical external circuit transport, create current and power. There are kind of MFCs such as Photosynthetic Alga Microbial Fuel Cells (PAMFCs), Microbial Desalination Cells (MDCs), and Sediment Microbial Fuel Cells (SMFCs). One of the main challenges with current state of MFCs biotechnology is its power output. MFCs with comparable power output can develop by terminal electron acceptors with a low redox potential and increase the cathode surface area. Anode and cathode performance are important factors limiting the power density of MFCs for practical application, but only a little development has been reported in the case of anode chamber.

Investigation of the Influence of Membrane Type on the Performance of Microbial Fuel Cell

“…Massively, The human population increases [1] leading the world to face two crucial crises which are; i) rapid worldwide increase in energy demand [2,3] which created an energy crisis represented by the depletion of fossil fuels due the high energy consumption [4,5,6] combined with the environmental pollution due to the atmospheric emissions of the greenhouse gases, contributing the global warming and acidification of the surface water [5,7], ii) Water scarcity; the water suitable for human consumption is only 2.5% [3,7], which is currently suffered due to increasing pollution and discharging wastewater [8]. Whereas, the other 97% of water is seawater and brackish water that could be usable after effective desalination [3,9,1].…”

“…The primary challenges in the MFC field are the design and scaling up of a compact bioelectrochemical reactor that utilizes available and inexpensive material to obtain a good MFC performance and convenient to operate and maintained under conditions of continuous flow [29]. The MFC implementation hinders by many limitations [16] that generally associated with the anode, cathode compartments [4], and the separating membrane [30]. At the anode chamber, the researchers determined the main limitations of the MFC performance such as substrate diffusion [30] and oxidation [31], electron transfer from microorganism to the anode surface, circuit resistance [31], and protons diffusion to the anolyte [30].…”