Microbial Fuel Cells as an Alternate Strategy for Sustainable Energy Generation

V. Parthasarathy¹, T. Prem Anand² and C. Chellaram^2,3*

¹Department of Computer Science and Engineering, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vel Tech Multi Tech, Dr.RR Dr.SR Engineering College, Chennai - 600 062, India. ³Centre for Research, Vel Tech Dr.RR Dr.SR Technical University, Chennai -600 062, India.

ABSTRACT: Globally there is steady increase in energy demands. The lack of sustainability of current fossil-centered energy strategies and safety issues relating to nuclear energy has resulted in a shift in energy policies around the world. The need for alternative non-fossil, non-nuclear technology has been stressed by experts and research on this line has produced promising results. The discovery of electro-active or electrogenic bacteria capable of producing electricity has been a potent area of research with an objective to develop microbial fuel cells. The microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a promising technology for sustainable energy generation, remediation, and sensoring. The MFC concept is based on microbial exocellular electron transfer, or the capacity of microbes to transfer electrons produced from the metabolic oxidation of organic substrates to insoluble, extracellular electron-accepting compounds. This paper presents a review of the latest developments in fuel cell technology and its future prospects.

KEYWORDS: Microorganism; Fuel cells; Recombinant DNA

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