Cobalt oxides-sheathed cobalt nano flakes to improve surface properties of carbonaceous electrodes utilized in microbial fuel cells

Abstract

A novel nanoflakes of cobalt sheathed with cobalt oxide is electrodeposited on four different carbonaceous anodes; carbon cloth (CC), carbon paper (CP) graphite (G) and activated carbon (AC), to introduce as high-performance anodes of microbial fuel cell (MFC). Interestingly, characterizations results indicated that novel metallic nanoflakes that sheathed by a thin layer of cobalt oxide were formed on the surface of the different anode materials. Moreover, using a simple and effective electrodeposition technique for fabricating of cobalt/cobalt oxide nanoflakes is introduced to overcome the hydrophobicity and the interfacial electron transfer of the anodes. The thin layer of cobalt/cobalt oxide nanoflakes significantly enhanced the microbial adhesion, the wettability of the anode surface and decrease the electron transfer resistance. Alternatively, the toxicity risk of the pure cobalt is overcome by the cobalt oxide layer. The application of the modified anodes in an air-cathode MFCs fed by industrial wastewater resulted in a significant improving in cell performance for the different anode materials. Where, the observed increasing in the power was 103, 137, 173 and 71% for the CC, CP, G and AC electrodes, respectively. This proposed treatment technique represented a high-performance, excellent microbial adhesion, easy fabrication and scale-up anodes for MFC.