Comparison of membrane-and cloth-cathode assembly for scalable microbial fuel cells: construction,performance and cost

摘要

The aim of this study is to compare the performance of different membrane cathode assembly (MCA) and cloth cathode assembly (CCA) in air-chamber microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and provide an optimum configuration for MFC scale-up. Two MCAs were prepared by hot-pressing the carbon cloth containing catalyst to anion exchange membrane (AEM) and cation exchange membrane (CEM),respectively. Two CCAs were built by coating the GORE-TEX(R) or canvas cloth with a mixture of Nickel-based conductive paint and catalyst.Under the batch mode using brewery wastewater,four MFCs were compared regarding power production,coulombic efficiency,COD removal,internal resistance and material cost. The experimental results show that CCAs are more favorable than MCAs due to their easier preparation,higher maximum power density and COD removal,and lower internal resistance and cost. The optimum cathode assembly is suggested to be the CCA using GORE-TEX(R) cloth,which has high power productivity and is cost-effective and mechanically robust enough to meet the important requirements for MFC scalability.