Low-Cost Anodic Material Made of Rice Husk Charcoal and Acrylic Paint for Soil-Based Microbial Fuel Cells

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have attracted attention as a technology that can simultaneously treat organic wastewater and generate electricity. The challenge facing MFC is to fabricate inexpensive electrodes. The performance of soil MFCs (SMFCs) is greatly affected by the material of the anode. In this study, a low-cost anodic material was fabricated based on charcoal made of rice husk (RHC) and commercially available acrylic paint (AP). Various RHC:AP ratios were tested to find out the optimum material composition. As a result, the SMFC with the anode made of a 75:25 wt% ratio generated a maximum power density of 6.7 μW/cm2. RHC showed a significant impact on the performance of the anode electrode.