Evaluation of the Application of Laminar Flow Microfluidic Microbial Fuel Cell Systems

• Main Authors: Zhong-Xian Wu, 吳忠憲
• Other Authors: Chang-Ping Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47gpn3

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 環境工程學研究所 === 106 === Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are a promising technology simultaneously for treating wastewater and generating electricity, which is powered by microorganisms utilizing substrates on the anode to release reducing power and generate electricity. In recent years, micro-MFCs have received increasing attention due to its many advantages, such as short start-up time, high surface-to-volume ratio in the structure, and the potential of biosensors for water quality detection. Microfluidic MFCs (MMFCs), first reported in 2011, is a particularly novel structure that is also a kind of micro-MFCs. These cells use laminar flow to distinguish anolytes and catholytes without the membrane separation, and thus the internal resistance can be reduced to enhance the power density. We use the MMFCs as a tool to quickly examine the performance of catalysts on electrodes. Because of its small volume, the reaction time is short and the microbial is easy to be disturbed by the surrounding changed. This study is to compare the performances of microorganism-coated electrodes (bio-anode) cultivated with different resistors in the H-type MFC. The max power density of MMFC is measured to be calculated 2150 mW m-2, which is obtained under the condition of 1000 ohms cultivated. The internal resistance can be evaluated by reading the power-density-curve. We also operate the MMFC for 100 hours and the results show a stable power density output about 2360 mW m-2 and assess the performance of MMFCs in series and parallel. The results indicate that cultivated using lower resistors (e.g., 550 ohms) can generate stronger power density. The MMFCs also has potential for applications in many aspects such as identifying exoelectrogens and toxicity testing.