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Abstract

Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) have developed significant interest among researchers in the past decade and a half as a promising technology for waste-water remediation and simultaneous energy production. Catalysts, such as platinum are used on the cathode and are one of the major reasons why scale-up is still not economically feasible. Similar to a conventional fuel cell, the half reactions are compartmentalized and for a MFC, the anodic reactions determine the rate of current production. This is due to the slow kinetics of the microbes on the anode side as compared to the Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) on the cathode. Reducing the catalyst use and matching the rates of the half reactions in each compartment can be a big step towards achieving feasibility for scale-up and towards studying the characteristics of specific microbes in a MFC. In this study, we reduce the cathodic platinum loading in a Single Chamber Microbial Fuel Cell (SCMFC) in order to match the ORR kinetics with the microbial kinetics on the anode. The electrochemical characteristics of the specific microbe used at the anode was E. coli MTCC 1610, which is studied by Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and reported as similar to the matching cathodic platinum loading. A novel electrode assembly is employed in this study, where 4 different platinum loadings on the cathode are used in the same SCMFC with a common anode.

Biography

Reeshab Goenka has completed his Bachelor’s degree (BTech) in Biotechnology from Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India and a Master’s degree (MTech) in Energy Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Energy Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, where his area of focus is microbial fuel cells.

Email: reeshabg@gmail.com