Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Energy need has been increasing worldwide exponentially. At present global energy requirements are mostly dependent on the fossil fuels, which eventually lead to foreseeable depletion of limited fossil energy sources. More recently, generation of electricity using microbial fuel cells (MFC) is seemingly gaining importance in the research. MFC is a biochemical-catalyzed system which generates electrical energy through the oxidation of biodegradable organic matter in the presence of either fermentative bacteria or enzyme under mild reaction conditions (ambient temperature and pressure) and bacterial energy is directly converted to electrical energy and to close the cycle, protons migrate through a proton exchange membrane (PEM) from anode to cathode. The present work deals with the designing and fabrication of two-chambered salt bridge microbial fuel cell with specific dimension. The efficiency of fabricated MFCs was checked by variation in current produced on different days of operation of MFC and effect of using dextrose in anodic chamber of MFC. The MFC was operated for 7 days with or without dextrose as carbon source. It was observed that while running MFC without dextrose the maximum current obtained was 13.6 μA and maximum voltage obtained was 146.8 mV. However while using 5% dextrose solution in the anodic-chamber the maximum current and voltage obtained was 170 μA and 216 mV respectively.
Keywords: Anode, salt bridge, dextrose, current.