Graphene as a key material for microbial fuel cells
Marzia QUAGLIO
(Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Center for Space Human Robotics - CSHR@Polito)
Microbial electrochemistry has been mainly of interest to fundamental research for many years, and it is only during the last decade that microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have been enormous advanced as a possible technology for energy production. MFCs can generate electricity by directly converting the chemical energy of organic substrates through catalytic activity of exoelectrogenic bacteria. They have the tremendous potential of directly harvesting chemical energy from several classes of wastes, or recovering it from several organic substrates naturally present in different environments [1, 2].
MFCs are constituted by an anaerobic anode, involved in a biological oxidation process, and a cathode where a reduction reaction takes place, usually involving oxygen as the electron acceptor. To enhance the device performances multidisciplinary research is needed, covering all aspects of the device design. New efforts are particularly needed to design new electrodes.
Due to its excellent electric, mechanic and electrochemical properties, graphene is a versatile material to design well performing devices [3]. New graphene based anodes can be prepared coupling the superior electrical conductivity of graphene to its compatibility with bacteria growth.
In addition, the excellent properties of graphene can be used to prepare graphene-based composites with high surface/volume ratio [4]. Combining nontoxic metal oxide as SnO in a graphene structure new cathode electrodes for MFCs can be designed to have good efficiency for the oxygen reduction reaction.
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