Overview on the developments of microbial fuel cells

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are a promising technology for electricity production from a variety of materials, such as natural organic matter, complex organic waste or renewable biomass, and can be advantageously combined with applications in wastewater treatment. The problem with MFCs is that they are technically still very far from attaining acceptable levels of power output, since the performance of this type of fuel cells is affected by limitations based on irreversible reactions and processes occurring both on the anode and cathode side. However, in the last years, there has been a growing amount of work on MFCs which managed to increase power outputs by an order of magnitude.The present review article discusses a number of biological and engineering aspects related to improvement of MFC performance including the effect of important parameters, such as pH, temperature, feed rate, shear stress and organic load. The recent progresses on scale-up MFC are summarized and the different modelling approaches to describe the different biological and transport phenomena in MFCs are also provided.

► We present a recent review concerning the most recent MFC optimization studies.
► The effect of pH, temperature, organic load, feed rate and shear stress are described.
► The current status of the MFC modelling and scale-up studies is provided.
► This work is a helpful tool for discovery new designs and operation regimes.
► Development of low-cost materials and optimization of operating and design parameters is crucial for MFCs.