The mechanism of bioelectricity generation from organic wastes: soil/plant microbial fuel cells

On a global perspective, organic wastes should be conceived as a precious resource that can be advantageous and in line with the waste-to-energy concept. Microbial fuel cell (MFC) is an up-and-coming bio-electrochemical technology developed to efficiently generate bioelectricity from various organic wastes, using microorganisms as catalysts. Soil can be used to produce electrical energy in MFCs, which transform chemical energy from soil organic compounds into electricity through catalysis by soil-derived microorganisms. In soil/plant microbial fuel cells (SMFC/PMFC), the soil behaves as a nutrient-rich anodic medium, as a resource of electrochemically active microorganisms and as a proton exchange membrane (PEM). In addition to the advantages of SMFC technology, it faces practical obstacles such as low power and current density. SMFC/PMFC systems can be developed through an understanding of previous work by describing their working methods and the theoretical foundations on which they are built. Also, a wide variety of criteria that are likely to limit their performance can be identified by giving a brief description of their components. This study reviews the various components that make up the SMFC/PMFC systems and offers suggestions that allow to illuminate the various scientific locks that continue to limit the effectiveness of the technology. This review will provide a discussion of the mechanism of SMFC/PMFCs, which the researchers highlighted as one of the renewable energy conversion systems, and details about the conversion of some of the energy available in organic wastes by electrochemically active microorganisms. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.