Graphene as Electrode Material for the Greater Power Generation in Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

The future of energy will dependent majorly on renewable sources; Microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology is a recent and a powerful technology which uses energy present in wastewater to convert into electrical energy with the help of microorganisms. The performance of MFC directly depends on the kinetics of the electrode reactions within the fuel cell, however, the overall low power density of the MFC and the high cost of its components are two major barriers for its commercialization. This barrier can be overcome by increasing surface area which is possible by using grapheme based electrode sand higher electro catalytic activity compared to the conventional carbon materials. In this work, Grapheme oxide was synthesized by using the modified Hummers method and the synthesized nano particles were characterized by the XRD, SEM, FTIR. Further, these nano particles are coated on carbon electrodes to improve the power density and max achieved is 98 m W/m 2 , whereas it found only 9 m W/m 2 without nano particles coating on carbon electrodes. There is a massive 90 % the difference in power density.