This paper reports on a miniaturized microbial fuel cell with a microfluidic flow-through configuration: a porous anolyte chamber is formed by filling a microfluidic chamber with three-dimensional graphene foam as anode, allowing nutritional medium to flow through the chamber to intimately interact with the colonized microbes on the scaffolds of the anode. No nutritional media flow over the anode. This allows sustaining high levels of nutrient utilization, minimizing consumption of nutritional substrates, and reducing response time of electricity generation owing to fast mass transport through pressure-driven flow and rapid diffusion of nutrients within the anode. The device provides a volume power density of 745 μW/cm3 and a surface power density of 89.4 μW/cm2 using Shewanella oneidensis as a model biocatalyst without any optimization of bacterial culture. The medium consumption and the response time of the flow-through device are reduced by 16.4 times and 4.2 times, respectively, compared to the non-flow-through counterpart with its freeway space volume six times the volume of graphene foam anode. The graphene foam enabled microfluidic flow-through approach will allow efficient microbial conversion of carbon-containing bioconvertible substrates to electricity with smaller space, less medium consumption, and shorter start-up time.
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机译:本文报道了一种具有微流体流通结构的微型微生物燃料电池:通过向微流体室中填充三维石墨烯泡沫作为阳极来形成多孔阳极液室,使营养介质流过该室,与燃料电池紧密地相互作用。定植在阳极支架上的微生物。营养介质不会流过阳极。由于通过压力驱动的流动快速进行质量传输以及阳极内营养物质的快速扩散,这可以维持较高水平的营养物质利用,最大限度地减少营养底物的消耗,并减少发电的响应时间。该设备使用无花希瓦氏菌作为模型生物催化剂,可提供745μW/ cm 3 sup>的体积功率密度和89.4μW/ cm 2 sup>的表面功率密度,而无需对细菌进行任何优化文化。与非流通式同类产品相比,流通式设备的介质消耗和响应时间分别减少了16.4倍和4.2倍,后者的自由空间为石墨烯泡沫阳极体积的六倍。启用石墨烯泡沫的微流体流通方法将允许以较小的空间,较少的介质消耗和较短的启动时间将含碳的生物可转化基质有效地微生物转化为电。
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