An Overview of Energy-efficient and Sustainable Oxygen Reduction Reaction Cathode in Microbial Fuel Cells

초록

Microbial energy generation technologies produce fuel and electricity from organic waste via a biochemical pathway followed by electrochemical reactions utilizing microbes modified electrodes (Choudhury et al., 2017; Mashkour et al., 2021, Boas et al., 2022; Dange et al., 2022). The microorganisms make fuels from raw organic materials via microbial catalyzed oxidization/reduction, which transfers the electrons to the electrode to produce electricity. The first microbial energy generation system, i.e. microbial fuel cell (MFC) was reported by Potter MC in 1991 (Potter and Waller, 1911). He used Saccharomyces cerevisiae bacteria to disintegrate organic matter and found the liberation of electrical energy during the disintegration of organic compounds by microbes. Then Barnett Cohen developed half-cell MFCs in 1931 (Cohen, 1931). The first successful MFC was developed by Suzuki et al. in 1976 (Karube et al., 1976). He connected the half-cell MFCs in series and produced 35 volts with only a current of 2 mA. They used the whole cell of Clostridium butyricum IFO 3847, and the immobilized cells continuously evolved hydrogen from glucose under aerobic conditions. After that, various MFC designs were developed for different applications and extensively studied to understand the principle and to increase performance (Africa, 2016; Kumar et al., 2018; Mashkour et al., 2021; Boas et al., 2022). MFC-based technologies are significant because they produce electricity in treating wastewater discharged from industrial, agricultural, and municipal sectors. The significance of the MFC device is microorganisms that perform the dual duty of making fuel out of organic compounds present in effluents and generates power. Henceforth, MFCs appeared as environmentally friendly electrical devices and rapidly evolved as a sustainable system due to their potential to recover energy in wastewater treatment (Apollon et al., 2022a). © 2024 Omar Solorza Feria and Sathish-Kumar Kamaraj.