Sediment microbial fuel cells as a new source of renewable and sustainable energy: present status and future prospects

Abstract

Active biocatalysts such as microorganisms or enzymes liberate electrons while electron donors are consumed in biological fuel cells. Biological fuel cells are a novel technology producing bio-electrochemical power using various materials such as complex organic waste or natural organic matter under anaerobic anode conditions. Recently, great attention has been paid to biological fuel cells due to their mild operating conditions and use of a variety of biodegradable substrates as fuel. Sediment microbial fuel cells (SMFCs) are a kind of microbial fuel cell (MFC) that can produce electrical current from the organic matter content of sediment using bacterial metabolism. SMFCs have been developed in the past decade to provide a renewable power source and organic matter removal. SMFCs differ from other MFCs due to their essentially complete anoxic conditions at the anode and their membrane-less structure. To further improve SMFC technology, this paper focuses on the limitations and challenges of SMFCs and collects the latest surveys in this field.