Selection and Design of Energy Harvesting Circuit for Microbial Fuel Cell for Low Power Applications

The world’s energy consumption has increased enormously due to increased energy demand. Therefore, this research focuses on alternate eco-friendly energy sources. A microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a bio-electrochemical source that converts the chemical energy in organic and inorganic compounds into electricity by using microorganisms as biocatalysts. MFCs attract substantial consideration as they can harvest renewable energy from organic matter. MFC is a low voltage source. An energy harvester is required to extract useable energy from MFC that can accumulate energy in a capacitor and increase the output potential of the MFC. In this paper, an overview of various energy harvesting circuits is discussed. The selection criteria for suitable energy harvesting circuit for a specified application is presented in this paper. Key parameters like cost, power, size of the MFC structure, and energy harvesting circuit (EHC) are discussed in the selection. This paper thoroughly analyses the design of energy harvesting system at the same time the literature works published in the past decade are presented. This review article categorizes the used topologies and comparatively presents their advantages and disadvantages.