Factors for Improving the Performance of Sediment Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

The overvoltage (voltage losses) of sediment microbial fuel cell (SMFC) is reviewed, and factors for improving the performance of SMFC are discussed through laboratory experiments. The SMFC performance (maximum power density P MAX , exchange current density i 0 , and limiting current density i limit) obtained from the voltage-current density curves is investigated under different electrode conditions (material, burning) and many types of sediment. It was found that P MAX , i 0 and i limit were largest in the cases of burning electrode at 500 , and when the sediment that has high content of unstable organic matter was used. These indicate that the overvoltage of SMFC can be effectively decreased based on these approaches, and it is also known that the rate-limiting factor of the SMFC performance is the electron exchange rate on the electrode.