Fabrication and Study of Power- Output of MultiChamber Microbial Fuel Cells (Mfcs) With Clay as Ion Exchange Partition

Abstract

The main challenges in the construction of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are the identification of materials, designs, and architectures that may maximize power generation efficiency and fabrication cost. In view of these facts, an attempt was made to design and fabricate Multi – Chamber MFCs of different configuration using locally available Mfensi clay as ionexchange partitions. The performance of each micro-cell, combined effect of the total system as one cell, and the overall performance were studied. The volume of each chamber of these cells was approximately 130 cm3 . It was found that the wastewater of chemical oxygen demand (COD) that was 6340 gm/L used in the MFCs yielded a maximum open circuit voltage (OCV) of 1421 ± 30 mV. The peak power density of 33.30 mW/cm2 (0.037 mA/cm2 ) at 1000 Ω was normalized to the anode surface area