Porous carbon with defined pore size as anode of microbial fuel cell

This paper reported a novel anode material, porous carbon with a defined pore size (DPC) matching bacteria, for microbial fuel cell (MFC). The DPC was prepared by using silica spheres as templates and sucrose as carbon precursor. The structure and morphology of the as-prepared DPC were characterized with X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and its performance as anode of MFC based on Escherichia coli (E. coli) was evaluated with chronoamperometry, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and polarization curve measurement. The result from SEM demonstrates that pores in the as-prepared DPC are well defined with an average diameter of 400 nm, which is a little larger than that of E. coli, and the polarization curve measurement shows that the as-prepared DPC exhibits superior performance as anode material loaded on carbon felt, delivering a power output of 1606 mW m−2, compared to the 402 mW m−2 of naked carbon felt anode, in the solution containing 2 g/L glucose. The excellent performance of the as-prepared DPC is attributed to its suitable pore size for accommodating E. coli strain, which facilitates the formation of bacterial biofilm and the electron transfer between bacteria and anode.