In our current world of technology, someone will say something impossible, like “I bet we can’t turn sugar into electricity”. However, it seems that time and time again, technology and science prove us humans wrong. The concept of MFC, or microbial fuel cells, is nothing too new, however, we are making strides in this field, and in the future, MFC can be the answer to renewable energy and pollution.
Microbial fuel cells create electricity by using bacteria, and the process mainly involves feeding bacteria, and then imitating bacterial behavior and its metabolic processes, which in turn create electricity. Almost any microbe can be used to convert chemical energy into currents, and was first developed using platinum electrodes and E.coli cultures in 1910 by Potter. This early work did not generate much interest into the field until the 1980s, when it was discovered that mediators could be used to greatly enhance electrical output. Since renewable has become one of the primary concerns of our world, MFC has seen has a surge in experiments done and the field has made great strides in development.
MFC has numerous benefits over normal fuel. Because MFC uses microorganisms, operation of the fuel cells is quite flexible. Because microbial organisms “can derive energy from many different types of fuel”, these fuel cells can be used and are convenient for situations where refined fuels like petroleum are not available. Using metabolic processes as catalysts to produce energy also negates the production of any harmful byproducts, like carbon monoxide. This makes it useful and much safer to experiment with this type of fuel.
A lot of experiments have seen MFC used in various situations. A primary use for MFC is wastewater management, and has begun to make their way to municipal levels. MFC have also been used to power low-power networks of sensors, which was demonstrated in the operation of a gastrobot, which works by feeding it sugar. Another interesting proposal for the use of MFC is the powering of rural communities, with no ready access to electricity. If this application comes to be true, rural communities in developing could have ready access to electricity, which has countless uses, and can develop our world even further.
A recent development in the field is the work of Chinese students, which used a variety of modified bacteria to produce 80 hours of electrical output. This is a large leap in terms of science, as this MFC experiment is the first to use a combination of microbes to power the fuel cell, and is reported to be more stable than wind and solar power. The team hopes to continue their work, and is working to make their MFC smaller and more efficient, both in terms of electrical capacity and electrical output time.
What impossible task will science achieve next?