A tiny but powerful microbial fuel cell

摘要

Imagine a submarine fleet of small machines at work in the ocean or a wastewater plant that can collect data while drawing their power from the "food" around them.Researchers from the U.S.Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) describe in this issue of ES&T (pp 2629-2634) the first step toward reaching that goal in the form of a miniature microbial fuel cell (mini-MFC) with a cross-section area of just 2 cm~2.