Voltage Drop Management and Step Up The Voltage of Sediment Microbial Fuel Cells

Sediment microbial fuel cell (SMFC) is a bio-electrochemical device which produces the pollution-free energy. SMFC generates low voltage with fluctuation between 0.982 V to 1.16 V of 60 days of the experiment. This voltage is not suitable to power the electronic device. So an ultra-low voltage DC-DC boost converter is proposed to regulated and step up the output voltage of SMFC. Performance of the boost converter is verified through simulation and experimental results. Single SMFC discharges in 30 sec by connecting the boost converter and gain maximum voltage in 210 sec after disconnecting the boost converter. Further, a scheme proposed for continuous energy harvesting from sediment microbial fuel cell in which eight parallel connected SMFCs provide an input voltage to boost converter one by one. It is noticed that the energy harvester DC-DC boost converter provides a continuous 2.56 V with the efficiency of 85.46%. The boost converter works well up to the voltage of 20 mV so this converter is appropriate for the SMFC energy harvesting. The proposed scheme is able to produce a suitable voltage for a small electronic device which needs a continuous power supply.