Performance investigation and comparison of polypropylene to Nafion117 as the membrane of a dual-chamber microbial fuel cell

Abstract

The high cost and recycling issues of common separators as the main components of Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have slowed down the development of MFCs recently. In this paper, a polypropylene membrane is proposed as an inexpensive membrane that can be recycled with lower environmental impacts. An experiment is performed in a dual-chamber microbial fuel cell to investigate and compare the proposed membrane effectiveness to Nafion117. The dual-chamber MFC was used because of its ease of use. A mixture of microbes and glucose was fed to the cell during the experiment. The internal resistance and coulombic efficiency are calculated by measuring the circuit voltage, power density, and open-circuit voltage to monitor the performance. The maximum output voltage of 500 mV was attained at a resistance of 380 kΩ. Furthermore, the maximum output power density was 0.7 mW.m−2, which occurred for 3.3 mA.m−2.

Keywords

• Microbial fuel cell
• Polypropylene
• Nafion
• Membrane
• Energy generation
• Coulombic efficiency