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Introduction

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Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

Security for water and energy sources is gaining importance throughout the world. Increasing population and climate changes pose serious challenges that involve energy, water resources, land use and waste treatment issues. Throughout the world there is intense interest in evaluating and implementing alternative energy sources (Schröder 2008). Lots of research is going in quest of renewable energy sources (Chandrasekhar et al. 2015). The hydropower, biomass, wind, geothermal and solar radiation are among major sources for renewable energy generation. In recent years, Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology has been emerging as one of the popular wastewater treatment-based technology to provide clean water and green energy (Pant et al. 2012). MFCs are bio-electrochemical devices where organic wastes degrade to smaller molecules, releasing electrons and protons, thereby generating electricity. MFCs can directly convert chemical energy into electrical energy through bioelectrochemical reactions utilizing microorganism or enzymatic catalysis. MFCs have several advantages as compared to the traditional fuel cells and enzymatic fuel cells. It is possible to utilize a wide range of organic or inorganic matter such as organic wastes, soil sediments as a source of fuel generation. High conversion efficiency can be achieved with such devices due to the direct or a single step conversion of substrate energy to electricity. Unlike a conventional fuel cell, MFCs can run at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure (Du et al. 2007). In addition it can be useful for widespread application in locations lacking electrical facilities (Stams et al. 2006). MFCs have outperformed other technologies like anaerobic digester, aerated lagoon etc. (Logan 2008) with a wide array of applications as depicted in Fig. 1.1. The objective of this chapter is to give an overview of the book.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India

    Debabrata Das

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  1. Debabrata Das
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  1. Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

    Debabrata Das

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Das, D. (2018). Introduction. In: Das, D. (eds) Microbial Fuel Cell. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66793-5_1

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