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Exoelectrogenic Bacteria: A Candidate for Sustainable Bio-electricity Generation in Microbial Fuel Cells
Published in Lakhveer Singh, Durga Madhab Mahapatra, Waste to Sustainable Energy, 2019
Shraddha Shahane, Payel Choudhury, O.N. Tiwari, Umesh Mishra, Biswanath Bhunia
MFC is a bioremediation-technique that emphasizes two vital problems the world is facing nowadays—non availability of clean water and the growing energy demand. Microbial fuel cell has become popular due to having dual advantages of good wastewater technology and energy recovery, rather than energy consumption for its operation. MFCs are promising candidates as they utilize exoelectrogen to remove pollutants from the wastes along with production of electricity. In the upcoming years, development of MFCs to generate electricity will be restricted by the pH, design of MFCs, conductivity of solution, efficiency, and cost of electrode material. To make MFCs an efficient source, it is important to study the kinetics of electron transfer and develop the electrode surfaces to achieve better colonization, which leads to producing maximum power output. The modifications in the surface properties of electrodes in fuel cell system are challenging to make fuel cells more efficient and sustainable. Furthermore, increasing anode surface area in fuel cell system influences the overall performance of microbial fuel cells. The MFCs operated with air cathode automatically reduce the energy demand required for aeration. MFC is a good technology of wastewater treatment process as well as power generation; moreover it needs lot of modifications to use this technology practically. The cathode material is the main parameter which limits this approach to be feasible in large scale applications. Hence, the adaptation of effective electrode material has demonstrated an effective way of improving the performance of MFC by producing high power output. It is possible one day that MFC will be the only source of power production when cathodic limitations in MFC are overcome. It may be possible to make MFCs sustainable through energy recovery from wastewater and biomass. The IEM are expensive and increase the total cost of the process. So there is a need to find out another inexpensive separator for maximum power generation by using cost-effective MFC technology in the future. Therefore, power generation can be accelerated by utilizing microbes (exoelectrogens), MFC design, surface and electrode material as well as different process parameters which would improve the usability of this technology in the coming years. With the proper use of electrode material, modified MFC configuration and suitable microbial strain would definitely produce high power densities. Thus, MFC can be cost-effective and a sustainable energy source.
Effect of treatment on electron transfer mechanism in microbial fuel cell
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2023
Ambika Arkatkar, Arvind Kumar Mungray, Preeti Sharma
In MFC, specific microbes called “exoelectrogens” are used as biocatalyst. Exoelectrogens are microorganisms that can degrade an organic substrate and donate the electrons outside their cell membrane. (Beyenal and Babauta 2015) The electrons given out by an exoelectrogen are collected on a conductive electrode, anode and finally reaches cathode via an external circuit. Though the results achieved in COD removal of wastewater treatment done in an MFC system is comparable to the aerated system (Huggins et al. 2013), the limited amount of power production has restricted the commercialization of this technology from past two decades.