Shift of voltage reversal in stacked microbial fuel cells

Energy extraction from a large-scale microbial fuel cell system treating municipal wastewater

“…When more rows of the MFCs connected to the circuit (S3 and S4), the OCV was increased from 1.6 to 2.4 V but the power was only improved by 10%; the performance of the S3 was even better than the S4. The voltage reversal was not observed as reported from other studies on single MFCs [20,24,25]. It seems that the power output of serial connection of multiple MFC rows was affected by the limitation of the weakest current production in each row.…”

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.…”

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

“…Furthermore, reaction kinetics on the cathode surface [31] and external resistance [17] are among other factors affecting its occurrence. In the present study, considering that all SMFCs in single mode carried out nearly similar performance in terms of voltage and current production, it can be concluded that their substrate consumptions at anode section were the same.…”