Effect of Catholytes on Performance of Blood-Based Microbial Fuel Cells

Abstract

<abstract> <bold>Abstract.</bold> Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are bio-electro-chemical devices that exploit microbial metabolism to produce electrical current. It has been proposed that these may be used to power medical implants in vivo. Electricity generation by MFCs with simulated intestinal fluid from the human body or bovine rumen fluid-based microbial consortia has produced power densities as high as 73.3 or 55 mW per square meter. The objective of this study was to test the effects of various blood catholytes (whole blood, RBCs, and hemoglobin) on the performance of microbial fuel cells. Bacterial consortia are from the rumen of dairy cattle, and the blood resource will be drawn from a living cow and then categorized/divided into whole blood, RBCs, and bovine hemoglobin. The best performance of electricity generation while the catholyte was pure bovine hemoglobin. In whole blood, platelets activated fibrinogen and caused it to form fibrin which attached on the electrodes and inhibited the electricity generation. Also, the process of formation of fibrin may release electrons from cathode to anode. Blood-based MFCs have potential to be a power supply (i.e., to power implantable medical devices such as pacemakers or insulin pumps) and also a sensor (i.e., to detect abnormalities in blood). For microbial fuel cells to make their way into biomedical applications in the future, a better understanding of their working mechanisms is imperative.