Laser surface texturing for enhancing microbial fuel cell-based electricity generation from wastewater

Abstract

A high volume of wastewater is drained out every year from agriculture and industrial operations. In the present study, Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) are used to generate electricity from sugarcane wastewater using titanium as an anode material. Besides, three different laser texturing such as linear pattern (LP), sinusoidal pattern (SP), and waviness pattern (WP) are created on titanium surface to enhance the electricity production and has been compared with the un-textured surface (UTS). In addition, water contact angle and roughness are measured on un-textured surface, LP, SP, and WP surfaces which are 60°, 45°, 34°, 20° and 2.9 μm, 10.7 μm, 15.9 μm, and 19.0 μm, respectively. Results show that laser textured surfaces exhibit a higher power density than the un-textured surface. The improvement in power density is 2–3.5 times that in un-textured surfaces. The outcome of this study indicates that laser textured microbial fuel cells can be considered as an efficient technique for generating electricity from the wastewater and also this could be considered as a new technique to offset wastewater treatment plant operating costs.