Construction of single chamber microbial fuel cell for bio-energy generation: A review

The Microbial Fuel Cell is a bio-electrochemical process that produces energy or electricity from different chemical compounds, such as waste material like food waste, agricultural residues, and various industrial and domestic wastewater stream by the action of microorganisms. Mainly MFCs are designed as two-chambered, but here it is aimed to demonstrate the utility of Single Chambered MFC (SCMFC) for producing energy. In this SCMFC, both the cathode and anode chamber are reported to be constructed, to produce energy by reducing the complexity of the construction with low-cost material. Even this SCMFC construction produces energy at low temperatures. In recent studies it is known that reproducible cycles of power generation could be achieved at the two lowest temperatures of 4^oC and 10^ºC, and production increases linearly with temperature. Using bamboo charcoal as an anode, it was noticed that production was maximum with a current density of about 3.27 × 10^3 mW/m² with one MFC chamber. In the systems, electrochemical microorganisms were oxidized with the chemical compound and released electrons in the anode chamber, and the reduction of the oxygen through the circuit was also observed.