Vertical alignment of polyaniline nanofibers on electrode surface for high-performance microbial fuel cells

Dan-Dan Zhai; Zhen Fang; Hongwei Jin; Ming Hui; Christopher Joseph Kirubaharan; Yang-Yang Yu; Yang-Chun Yong

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2019.121499

Vertical alignment of polyaniline nanofibers on electrode surface for high-performance microbial fuel cells

Bioresour Technol. 2019 Sep:288:121499. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.121499. Epub 2019 May 17.

Authors

Dan-Dan Zhai¹, Zhen Fang², Hongwei Jin³, Ming Hui³, Christopher Joseph Kirubaharan², Yang-Yang Yu², Yang-Chun Yong⁴

Affiliations

¹ Biofuels Institute, School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China; College of Biological Engineering, Henan University of Technology, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
² Biofuels Institute, School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China.
³ College of Biological Engineering, Henan University of Technology, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
⁴ Biofuels Institute, School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China; Zhenjiang Key Laboratory of Advanced Sensing Materials and Devices, School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China. Electronic address: ycyong@ujs.edu.cn.

PMID: 31128545
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.121499

Abstract

Electrode modifications with conductive and nanostructured polyaniline (PANI) were recognized as efficient approach to improve interaction between electrode surface and electrogenic bacteria for boosting the performance of microbial fuel cell (MFC). However, it still showed undesirable performance because of the challenge to control the orientation (such as vertical alignment) of PANI nanostructure for extracellular electron transfer (EET). In this work, vertically aligned polyaniline (VA-PANI) on carbon cloth electrode surface were prepared by in-situ polymerization method (simply tuning the ratio of tartaric acid (TA) dopant). Impressively, the VA-PANI greatly improved the EET due to the increased opportunity to connect with conductive proteins. Eventually, MFC equipped with the VA-PANI electrodes delivered a power output of 853 mW/m², which greatly outperformed those electrodes modified with un-oriented PANI. This work provided the possibility to control the orientation of PANI for EET and promise to harvest energy from wastewater with MFC.

Keywords: Extracellular electron transfer; Microbial fuel cell; Nanofiber; Polyaniline; Vertical alignment.

MeSH terms

Aniline Compounds
Bioelectric Energy Sources*
Electrodes
Nanofibers*

Substances

Aniline Compounds
polyaniline