Abstract
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are envisioned as one of the most promising alternative renewable energy sources because they can generate electric current continuously while treating waste. Terrestrial Microbial Fuel Cells (TMFCs) can be inoculated and work on the use of soil, which further extends the application areas of MFCs. Energy supply, as a primary influential factor determining the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes, remains an open challenge in sensor networks. In theory, sensor nodes powered by MFCs have an eternal life. However, low power density and high internal resistance of MFCs are two pronounced problems in their operation. A single-hop WSN powered by a TMFC experimental setup was designed and experimented with. Power generation performance of the proposed TMFC, the relationships between the performance of the power generation and the environment temperature, the water content of the soil by weight were measured by experiments. Results show that the TMFC can achieve good power generation performance under special environmental conditions. Furthermore, the experiments with sensor data acquisition and wireless transmission of the TMFC powering WSN were carried out. We demonstrate that the obtained experimental results validate the feasibility of TMFCs powering WSNs.
Highlights
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs), converting chemical energy from organic compounds to electrical energy through catalytic reactions of microorganisms, can be envisioned as archetypical microbial Bioelectrochemical Systems (BESs)
Our aim is to improve the performance of the proposed Terrestrial Microbial Fuel Cells (TMFCs) and develop a TMFC powering of a single-hop Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) node experimental setup
The performances of the proposed TMFC including the voltage between electrodes during inoculation, the open circuit voltage (OCV), and the polarization curve were reported through a series of experiments
Summary
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs), converting chemical energy from organic compounds to electrical energy through catalytic reactions of microorganisms, can be envisioned as archetypical microbial Bioelectrochemical Systems (BESs). MFCs have attracted a large amount of interest in the past decade because they can generate electric power while treating waste. MFCs can continuously generate power at normal temperature, atmospheric pressure, and neutral pH value without any additional maintenance. In America, it causes about 1.5% of the municipal energy consumption for waste water treatment. The wastewater treatment results in about 10% of the municipal energy consumption [1]. The energy content of municipal wastewater is considered to be nine times higher than the energy demand necessary for its treatment [6]
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