Abstract
The microbial fuel cell (MFC) is an efficient electrochemical technology that has potential to treat wastewater and produce electricity, simultaneously. Including various limiting factors, the slow kinetics of cathode reactions is one of the major limiting factors that significantly affect the performance of the MFC. Besides the performance and cost, sluggish nature of cathode reactions is still one of the major obstacles in the way of commercial applications of MFCs. Precious metals such as platinum and other metals show excellent performance; however, their high cost, durability, and environment toxicity limit their practical application. Oxygen is the most suitable candidate for electron acceptors in MFCs; however, oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is a very slow kinetic mechanism. A wide range of materials based on carbon, metal based, metal oxide, and carbon–metal hybrids and their nanocomposites have been investigated for improved ORR. In this chapter, various materials have been discussed in detail for their potential application as electrocatalysts for ORR in MFCs.
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