Application of nitrogen-doped carbon powders as low-cost and durable cathodic catalyst to air-cathode microbial fuel cells

► An in-depth study on application of N-doped carbon powders (NDCP) to MFCs. ► NDCP based MFC showed a performance comparable to that of Pt/C based MFC. ► NDCP was superior to Pt/C in low cost, low over potential and high stability. ► An effective pretreatment was introduced to the preparation of NDCP. ► An in-depth XPS based analysis was made on the pretreatment and N-doped treatment.