An Analysis of Anaerobic Dual-Anode Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) Performance

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can be used to directly generate electricity from various forms of biodegradable organic matter (Bond, Holmes et al. 2002; Liu, Ramnarayanan et al. 2004; Min and Logan 2004). The effect of reactor design on power output and its significant enhancement in the performance of MFCs can be achieved through the development of a modified MFC reactor architecture called dual-anode chambered MFC. This reactor was constructed by incorporating two anodes chambers flanking a single cathode chamber which increases the maximum current production of the device compared to single anode systems. The device is shown to be functionally equivalent to a linkage of two single-anode chambered MFCs together in parallel circuit but has reduced material requirements since a single cathode is utilized. Results indicate that the dual-anode MFC produces a power per unit anode volume of 23.6 Wm^-3 , about a 1.2 times the power of a single-anode MFC (20.2 Wm^-3 ). The internal resistance was reduced by 45 %, from 106 W (single-anode) to 58.3 W (dual-anode).