Microbial Fuel Cells for Bioelectricity Generation and Wastewater Treatment—A Review

Devastating environmental health which is associated with many factors of which one is improper sanitation of water, uncontrolled release of many toxic organic contaminants from the modern industries had exploited the nature a lot. The major causes for environmental pollution and depletion in the quality of surface and ground water bodies are wastewater which comes from many ways. The exhaustible usage of non-renewable sources of energy (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) are not confined to developing countries alone but are the worldwide along. Recent advancement in the Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology may serve as an eco-friendly, sustainable and the best accepted way to conserve environment and meet the criterion for the water sanitation needs. Ongoing waste water treatment technologies are less effective when it comes to sustainability, as there is rapid growth in population and industrialization and hence sudden increase in the exploitation of resources combinedly, had given researchers insight to brought such a novel technique which can serve the purpose of water sanitation along with the energy yielding conserving of the environment. MFC technology has proven the efficient mode for the generation of energy by transforming the organic waste into the electricity through microbially catalysed anodic, and microbial/enzymatic/abiotic cathodic electrochemical reactions using various redox mediators. To enhance the electron transfer between microorganisms and electrode the redox mediators are majorly used in MFC or microbial electrochemical systems. To produce electricity from the oxidation of organic compounds by using the bio-electrochemical catalytic activity of microbes which in turns uses wastewater as a source for the same, hence reducing the contaminants from wastewater. In some cases, the sources can be industrial wastewater, substrates present in urban sewage, agriculture, food, dairy industries, etc. Thus, scientists are aiming to construct the effective microbial fuel cell or microbial electrochemical systems for generation of electricity and wastewater treatment simultaneously. Besides so many benefits come along with this technology, it still faces practical barriers such as low production of power and electric current density. To determine the real potential of the MFC technology for sustainable and energy generating wastewater treatment, some remarkable investigation or important discoveries in electrode materials, innovative and integrated methods configurations are urgent requirement. In the present article different parts of MFC such as anode, cathode, membrane, redox mediators and also basic mechanism of the microbial electrochemical systems or MFC for wastewater treatment and production of energy have been reviewed.