A Generation of Microbial Fuel Cells with Current Outputs Boosted by More Than One Order of Magnitude

Abstract

Mikroben bei der Arbeit: Mit einer kontinuierlichen Stromabgabe von bis zu 1.5 mA cm−2 übertrifft die abgebildete mikrobielle Brennstoffzelle ähnliche Modelle um mehr als eine Größenordnung. Das neuartige Brennstoffzellenkonzept beruht auf polymermodifizierten, katalytisch aktiven Anoden, die den Elektronentransport von der Bakteriensuspension zur Elektrode bewirken.

Selective Knockout of Gold Active Sites

“…It has long been known that the activity of electrodes (and of heterogeneous catalysts) is associated with surface defects [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]; platinum black is a familiar example [10]. In contrast, deactivation is typically achieved by "brute-force" methods such as total passivation [11,12].…”

Interfacing Electrocatalysis and Biocatalysis with Tungsten Carbide: A High‐Performance, Noble‐Metal‐Free Microbial Fuel Cell

“…Such a large peak current density has never been reported before, and it even exceeds our results with platinumpolyaniline sandwich electrodes. [10,11] After about 12 hours the current density decreases because of substrate exhaustion in the medium. The excellent performance of the WCmodified graphite disk electrode can also be derived from galvanodynamic polarization experiments (see Figure 2 b), which show that high current densities are achieved even at rather negative potentials.…”

“…[9] We have focused our research on the exploitation of electron-rich microbial metabolites as fuels (electron shuttles) for electricity generation (Figure 1 d). For this approach, we have developed robust and yet highly effective electrocatalytic anode catalysts based on platinum-polyaniline [10] and platinum-poly(tetrafluoroaniline) [11] sandwich materials that allow the efficient in situ oxidation of microbial hydrogen, that is, in the microbial cultures. Current densities up to 1.5 mA cm À2 , short lag times, and a great versatility to exploit fermentative, [12,13] photofermentative, [14] and even purely photosynthetic [15] microbial activity set new standards for MFC performance.…”

Sustainable Conversion of Glucose into Hydrogen Peroxide in a Solid Polymer Electrolyte Microbial Fuel Cell

“…[18] Based on the considerations above, we propose a glucoseto-H 2 O 2 MFC system that embodies two essential components: an anaerobic fermentation (AF) part and a solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) fuel cell, as illustrated in Scheme 1. The primary function of the anaerobic fermentation is to accomplish the decomposition of the substrate while microbially synthesizing hydrogen for anode oxidation of the fuel cell.…”