Electricity generation, energy storage, and microbial-community analysis in microbial fuel cells with multilayer capacitive anodes
2019
Wang, Yuyang | Chen, Ye | Wen, Qing | Zheng, Hongtao | Xu, Haitao | Qi, Lijuan
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can potentially be used for power generation, but their low energy storage hinders their practical application. This study presents a novel, multilayer capacitive bioanode, modified using nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNT), polyaniline (PANI), and manganese dioxide (MnO₂). The power-generation and energy-storage performance of MFCs containing carbon felt (CF)/N-CNT/PANI/MnO₂ anodes was found to be much higher than that of traditional MFCs. The power density of an MFC with a CF/N-CNT/PANI/MnO₂ bioanode (13.8 W/m³) was 2.7 times greater than that of an MFC with a bare anode (3.73 W/m³). Similarly, the exchange current density of the bioanode (0.41 A/m²) was much higher than that of the bare anode (0.06 A/m²). In chronoamperometric tests with 60 min of charging and discharging, it was observed that the stored charge of the bioanode (2492.80 C/m²) was 33 times higher than that of the bare anode (75.50 C/m²). High-throughput sequencing results showed that the CF/N-CNT/PANI/MnO₂-modified bioanode exhibited high community diversity and selective enrichment of electrogenic bacteria. The dominant genera on the modified anode were electroactive bacteria, Desulfuromonas (34.39%) and Geobacter (27.93%). Therefore, MFCs with capacitive bioanodes show potential for storage and release of energy within short periods of time.
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