Comments on 'Electricity generation by Enterobacter cloacae SU-1 in mediator less microbial fuel cell' by Samrot et al., Int. J. Hydrogen Energy, 35 (15) 2010, 7723-7729

摘要

With great concern have we noticed the publication by Samrot et al.on a microbial fuel cell (MFC) with E. cloacae in the most recent issue of IJHE. The publication lacks fundamental understanding of the microbial fuel cell science and technology as well as any relevant background information on the used MFC setup that would allow reproducing/validating the results and claims of this study. It is especially crucial to advert to this because the authors report performance values above everything ever observed for MFCs in the research field (3 mW/cm2). In a previous letter to the editor Razaei et al. [2] already pointed out that the reported data (power densities) are very unlikely, which was supported by published estimates on the theoretical maximum performance of MFCs (without elec-trocatalysts, that would, for example, catalyze the oxidation of microbially produced hydrogen). In response [3], the authors did not provide a sufficient critical evaluation of their own work, but only of the cited references. Also, the authors did not provide any additional experimental information (e.g., dimensions and surface area of the electrodes or membranes) that made their claims verifiable. We have strong reasons to doubt the correctness of the power results of this study for the following findings.