MESSAI.iO

AI summary

70% confidence

Anode maturation time for a single chamber microbial fuel cell with a brush anode was found to be around 9 weeks, after which maximum power densities became stable and variations were negligible.

Generated by MESSAI extraction pipeline · review against source PDF

Literature priors

Generic MFCRepresentative model
Click to animate flow
loading 3D model…

Representative MFC — matched on the paper’s system type only, not its reactor or geometry.

Distribution

Reported parameters

The author’s reported value (▼) sits on top of the literature distribution from MESS-Parameters. Values outside the band are flagged as outliers.

Coulombic efficiency7%

188 extracted values

View extracted values

Open in lab for full controls, parameter editing, and template overlays.

Open in lab →

What they did

System
MFC
Substrate
pure compound

What worked

No outcome metrics extracted yet.

Abstract

To obtain an accurate and reproducible experimental results in microbial fuel cell (MFC), it is important to know ‘anode maturation biofilm’ to produce a stable and maximum performance. For this purpose, four single chamber MFCs were tested in this study. The linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) polarization tests illustrated that maximum power densities of three MFCs became stable after 9 weeks. Although there were variations afterwards, such variations were negligible. Average maximum power densities from the 9th to the 17th week were 2,990 mW/m² (MFC-4), 2,983 mW/m² (MFC-2), 2,368 mW/m² (MFC-3) and 837 mW/m² (MFC-1). Polarization resistance shows that MFC-1 had much larger anode resistance (36.6-85.4 Ω) than the other MFCs (1.7-11.6 Ω). Anodic cyclic voltammetry (CV) shows that current production increased over time and MFC-1 had much smaller current production (24.4 mA) than the other MFCs (31.0-34.9 mA) at 17th week. The increased current production indicates anode biofilm became more mature over time, but overall cell performance did not increased accordingly. Possibly due to the bad inoculation, MFC-1 showed the lowest performance. However, its performance was restored to the initial performance and anode resistance was reduced by 47% at 17th week. This study shows that the optimum anode maturation time is 9 weeks and that bioanode performance is a key factor for MFC performance. This study also shows than LSV polarization and CV tests are accurate and non-destructive measurement methods for diagnosing anode performance.

Key findings

  • Maximum power densities of three MFCs became stable after 9 weeks, with average values ranging from 2,368 to 2,990 mW/m².
  • Polarization resistance showed that MFC-1 had a much larger anode resistance (36.6-85.4 Ω) compared to the other MFCs (1.7-11.6 Ω).
  • Anodic cyclic voltammetry (CV) showed that current production increased over time, but overall cell performance did not increase accordingly.

Keywords

Microbial fuel cellAnodeLinear sweep voltammetryPolarization (electrochemistry)Cyclic voltammetryElectrode

Identifiers

DOI
10.20944/preprints202006.0209.v1
Journal
Preprints.org
Year
2020