Plant Microbial Fuel Cells–Based Energy Harvester System for Self-powered IoT Applications

• Main Authors: Edith Osorio de la Rosa, Javier Vázquez Castillo, Mario Carmona Campos, Gliserio Romeli Barbosa Pool, Guillermo Becerra Nuñez, Alejandro Castillo Atoche, Jaime Ortegón Aguilar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-03-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: energy harvesting; internet of things (IoT); plant microbial fuel cell (PMFC); self-powered systems; wireless sensor network
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/6/1378

The emergence of modern technologies, such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), the Internet-of-Things (IoT), and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, involves the use of batteries, which pose a serious environmental risk, with billions of batteries disposed of every year. However, the combination of sensors and wireless communication devices is extremely power-hungry. Energy Harvesting (EH) is fundamental in enabling the use of low-power electronic devices that derive their energy from external sources, such as Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC), solar power, thermal and kinetic energy, among others. Plant Microbial Fuel Cell (PMFC) is a prominent clean energy source and a step towards the development of self-powered systems in indoor and outdoor environments. One of the main challenges with PMFCs is the dynamic power supply, dynamic charging rates and low-energy supply. In this paper, a PMFC-based energy harvester system is proposed for the implementation of autonomous self-powered sensor nodes with IoT and cloud-based service communication protocols. The PMFC design is specifically adapted with the proposed EH circuit for the implementation of IoT-WSN based applications. The PMFC-EH system has a maximum power point at 0.71 V, a current density of 5 mA cm<inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <msup> <mrow></mrow> <mrow> <mo>&#8722;</mo> <mn>2</mn> </mrow> </msup> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula>, and a power density of 3.5 mW cm<inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <msup> <mrow></mrow> <mrow> <mo>&#8722;</mo> <mn>2</mn> </mrow> </msup> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula> with a single plant. Considering a sensor node with a current consumption of 0.35 mA, the PMFC-EH green energy system allows a power autonomy for real-time data processing of IoT-based low-power WSN systems.