Control of voltage reversal in serially stacked microbial fuel cells through manipulating current: Significance of critical current density

Concurrent Control of Power Overshoot and Voltage Reversal with Series Connection of Parallel‐Connected Microbial Fuel Cells

“…An and Lee revealed that heterogeneous mass transfer could lead to a difference in EAB activities on the anodes. Hence, it was thought that heterogeneous mass transfer due to the no stirring condition of the anodes could result in both the performance difference in the units, as well as the power overshoot in MFC unit 2.…”

“…Studies in the literature have reported that that the microbial community, fuel starvation, or substrate loading rate can cause relatively sluggish kinetics on the anode and lead a large anode overpotential compared to the cathode, which results in voltage reversal of the stacked MFC. The literature also discussed that the reversed voltage could adversely affect the electro‐active anode biofilm after long‐term operation or changes to the microbial community in the stacked MFC, which might deteriorate MFC systems . For this reason, there have been a number of trials that have attempted to control the voltage reversal in stacked MFC systems using capacitors, diodes, resistors, etc.…”

“…reported an active method of using voltage‐balancing circuitry to prevent voltage reversal in stacked MFCs. An et al . proposed an easy and economical R threshold method using an external resistance and suppressing the voltage in a superior MFC unit, which can be applied to small‐scale MFCs.…”

Bioelectronic platforms for optimal bio-anode of bio-electrochemical systems: From nano- to macro scopes

“…Thus, the voltage reversal is magnified when scaling-up; the ability to control voltage reversal is required. Proposals for this task included manipulating current method using a threshold resistance (An et al, 2015b), and using the assistance current method with an assistance electrode (Kim et al, 2015); parallel connections have also been attempted.…”

The effect of number and configuration of sediment microbial fuel cells on their performance in an open channel architecture

“…Although, connecting microbial fuel cells in series boosts the total voltage, it also leads to voltage reversal that negatively affects voltage production [16,17]. Attempts have been made to eliminate this phenomenon by using resistor [20], capacitor and running SMFC with high external resistance [17].…”