The Microbial Fuel Cell Based on the Nano MoO3/TiO2 Whiskers

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has been widely studied and believed to be one of the most promising semiconductor material in the field of materials science, energy science and biology science due to its superior characteristics in photoreactivity, nontoxicity and low cost. Our previous study has already demonstrated that TiO2 whiskers, with the advantages of high porosity and high specific surface area, have the better properties of photocatalysis than that of TiO2 nanoparticles. Thus, in this contribution we have explored the possibility to utilize the TiO2 whiskers as well as their hybrid nanocomposites of MoO3/TiO2 whiskers as an efficient catalyst for the microbial fuel cells (MFCs), which is an emerging biotechnology that produces electricity while oxidizing the organic substances in wastewater. Our observations demonstrate that choosing potential cathode materials and cathode surface modification and analysing the effect of surface characteristics of the cathode material for microbial energy production are significant for improving the ability of power production of MFCs. Especially, the results of the open circuit voltage in single chamber, air-cathode, and microbial fuel cells (MFCs) indicate that TiO2 whisker hybrid with nano MoO3 could be utilized as a novel and promising microbial fuel cell composites with high capability like facile adsorption of the microorganism, specific and big surface area, high porosity, low cost and simple fabrication.