Nowadays, pollution caused by energy production systems is a major environmental concern. Therefore, the development of sustainable energy sources is required. Amongst others, the microbial fuel cell (MFC) seems to be a possible solution because it can produce clean energy at the same time that waste is stabilized. Unfortunately, mainly due to industrial discharges, the wastes could contain nitrates, or nitrates precursors such...

In this work, the effect of the external load on the current and power generation, as well as on the pollutant removal by microbial fuel cells (MFCs), has been studied by step-wise modifying the external load. The load changes included a direct scan, in which the external resistance was increased from 120 Ω to 3300 Ω, and a subsequent reverse scan, in which the external resistance was decreased back to 120 Ω. The reduction in the...

Nowadays, microbial fuel cells (MFC) stand up as a promising renewable energy source. Due to the ability of the MFC to oxidize a wide spectrum of substrates, wastewater seems to be one of the most interesting fuels. Unfortunately, wastewater could contain electron acceptors such as nitrate, which could interfere with the electrical performance of the MFC. In this work, the influence of oxidised nitrogen forms on the electricity...

The energy contained in wastewaters has been identified as a promising sustainableenergy resource that could be harvested by using microbial fuel cells (MFC). When dealing with realwastewaters, the MFCs should be able to manage high flow rates and flow rates fluctuations. In thiswork, the short-term effects of the influent flow rate variations on the performance of a microbialfuel cell has been studied. With this aim, the influent...

Rapeseed straw is an attractive fuel material for microbial fuel cells (MFCs) due to its high content of carbohydrates (more than 60% carbohydrates). This study has demonstrated that reducing sugars can be efficiently extracted from raw rapeseed straw by combination of hydrothermal pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis followed by utilization as a fuel in two-chamber MFCs for electrical power generation. The most efficient method...