Microbial fuel cell: Investigation of the electrical power production of cow dung and human faeces using 3D-printed reactors

Abstract

This paper presents the electrical power harvested from cow dung and human faeces as the results of conducted investigations in three-dimensional microbial fuel cell printed reactors. A 400 ml single chamber air cathode reactors were designed, and six copies were printed for the experiment. The power densities obtained respectively for cow dung and human faeces were 14.1 mW/m² and 4.7 mW/m² in terms of the anode electrode area, and 353 mW/m³ and 118.3 mW/m³ in terms of the anode chamber volume. Furthermore, when six microbial fuel cells with cow dung were stacked together, the power productions of series, parallel, series-parallel, and parallel-series configurations and their energy losses were investigated. It was observed from this investigation that the parallel-series combination produced the most energy with fewer losses. This configuration can be chosen for the small-scale system to avoid the cost related to the protective devices, usually used to protect against voltage imbalance in the cells.