Supercapacitive microbial fuel cell: Characterization and analysis for improved charge storage/delivery performance

Jeremiah Houghton; Carlo Santoro; Francesca Soavi; Alexey Serov; Ioannis Ieropoulos; Catia Arbizzani; Plamen Atanassov

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2016.06.105

Supercapacitive microbial fuel cell: Characterization and analysis for improved charge storage/delivery performance

Bioresour Technol. 2016 Oct:218:552-60. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2016.06.105. Epub 2016 Jun 28.

Authors

Jeremiah Houghton¹, Carlo Santoro¹, Francesca Soavi², Alexey Serov¹, Ioannis Ieropoulos³, Catia Arbizzani², Plamen Atanassov⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Center for Micro-Engineered Materials (CMEM), University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
² Department of Chemistry "Giacomo Ciamician", Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, Via Selmi, 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy.
³ Bristol BioEnergy Centre, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Block T, UWE, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK; Biological, Biomedical and Analytical Sciences, UWE, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK.
⁴ Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Center for Micro-Engineered Materials (CMEM), University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA. Electronic address: plamen@unm.edu.

Abstract

Supercapacitive microbial fuel cells with various anode and cathode dimensions were investigated in order to determine the effect on cell capacitance and delivered power quality. The cathode size was shown to be the limiting component of the system in contrast to anode size. By doubling the cathode area, the peak power output was improved by roughly 120% for a 10ms pulse discharge and internal resistance of the cell was decreased by ∼47%. A model was constructed in order to predict the performance of a hypothetical cylindrical MFC design with larger relative cathode size. It was found that a small device based on conventional materials with a volume of approximately 21cm(3) would be capable of delivering a peak power output of approximately 25mW at 70mA, corresponding to ∼1300Wm(-3).

Keywords: Electrode area; Linear model; Microbial fuel cell (MFC); Power performance; Supercapacitor (SC).

MeSH terms

Bioelectric Energy Sources*
Electric Capacitance*
Electrodes
Models, Theoretical