Abstract
This study reports for the first time the full charging of a state-of-the-art mobile smartphone, using Microbial Fuel Cells fed with urine. This was possible by employing a new design of MFC that allowed scaling-up without power density losses. Although it was demonstrated in the past that a basic mobile phone could be charged by MFCs, the present study goes beyond this to show how, simply using urine, an MFC system successfully charges a modern-day smartphone. Several energy-harvesting systems have been tested and results have demonstrated that the charging circuitry of commercially available phones may consume up to 38% of energy on top of the battery capacity. The study concludes by developing a mobile phone charger based on urine, which results in 3h of phone operation (outgoing call) for every 6h of charge time, with as little as 600mL (per charge) of real neat urine.
Highlights
Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are a bio-electrochemical technology converting organic waste into electricity [1]
As the ultimate aim of this study is the deployment of MFCs in real environments, the feeding mechanism needed to operate without any energy requirement
The 6 MFCs modules, which were assembled into the single cascade stack, were identical to the large ones described in [21]
Summary
Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are a bio-electrochemical technology converting organic waste into electricity [1]. An MFC comprises two electrodes, a cathode and an anode, and relies on the. Capacity of certain microorganisms to use the anode as their endterminal electron acceptor in their anaerobic respiration. The technology’s intrinsic characteristics are, low power – compared to established technologies, wide range of organic matter (otherwise considered as waste) can be used as fuel, low fiscal and maintenance costs, stacking of MFC collectives required for exploitable power levels and durability with robustness.
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