Increased power density from a spiral wound microbial fuel cell

Using Microbial fuel cell (MFC) to convert organic and inorganic matter into electricity is of great interest for powering portable devices, which is now still limited by the output of MFC. In this study, a spiral wound MFC (SWMFC) with relatively large volume normalized surface area of separator (4.2 cm(2)/ml) was fabricated to enhance power generation. Compared with double-membrane MFC (DMMFC) and conventional double chamber MFC (DCMFC), the power density of SWMFC increased by 42% and 99% resulted from its lower internal resistance. Besides larger separator area, the better performance of SWMFC benefited from its structure sandwiching the cathodes between two separators. This point was proved again by a comparison of another DCMFC and a triple chamber MFC (TCMFC) as well as a simulation using finite element method. Moreover, the feature of SWMFC was more convenient and compact to scale up. Therefore, SWMFC provides a promising configuration for high power output as a portable power source. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.