Wang Xin, Cheng Shaoan, Feng Yujie, Merrill Matthew D, Saito Tomonori, Logan Bruce E
State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, No 73 Huanghe Road, Nangang District, Harbin 150090, China.
Environ Sci Technol. 2009 Sep 1;43(17):6870-4. doi: 10.1021/es900997w.
Flat electrodes are useful in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as close electrode spacing improves power generation. Carbon cloth and carbon paper materials typically used in hydrogen fuel cells, however, are prohibitively expensive for use in MFCs. An inexpensive carbon mesh material was examined here as a substantially less expensive alternative to these materials for the anode in an MFC. Pretreatment of the carbon mesh was needed to ensure adequate MFC performance. Heating the carbon mesh in a muffle furnace (450 degrees C for 30 min) resulted in a maximum power density of 922 mW/m2 (46 W/m3) with this heat-treated anode, which was 3% more power than that produced using a mesh anode cleaned with acetone (893 mW/ m2; 45 W/m3). This power density with heating was only 7% less than that achieved with carbon cloth treated by a high temperature ammonia gas process (988 mW/m2; 49 W/m3). When the carbon mesh was treated by the ammonia gas process, power increased to 1015 mW/m2(51 W/m3). Analysis of the cleaned or heated surfaces showed these processes decreased atomic O/C ratio, indicating removal of contaminants that interfered with charge transfer. Ammonia gas treatment also increased the atomic N/C ratio, suggesting that this process produced nitrogen related functional groups that facilitated electron transfer. These results show that low cost heat-treated carbon mesh materials can be used as the anode in an MFC, providing good performance and even exceeding performance of carbon cloth anodes.
扁平电极在微生物燃料电池（MFC）中很有用，因为紧密的电极间距可提高发电效率。然而，氢燃料电池中常用的碳布和碳纸材料对于MFC来说成本过高。本文研究了一种廉价的碳网材料，作为MFC中阳极材料的一种成本低得多的替代品。需要对碳网进行预处理以确保MFC有足够的性能。在马弗炉中加热碳网（450摄氏度，30分钟），使用这种热处理后的阳极可得到最大功率密度为922毫瓦/平方米（46瓦/立方米），比使用丙酮清洗过的网阳极产生的功率（893毫瓦/平方米；45瓦/立方米）高3%。这种加热后的功率密度仅比通过高温氨气处理的碳布所达到的功率密度（988毫瓦/平方米；49瓦/立方米）低7%。当碳网经过氨气处理时，功率增加到1015毫瓦/平方米（51瓦/立方米）。对清洗或加热后的表面分析表明，这些处理降低了原子O/C比，表明去除了干扰电荷转移的污染物。氨气处理还提高了原子N/C比，表明该过程产生了有助于电子转移的含氮官能团。这些结果表明，低成本的热处理碳网材料可用于MFC的阳极，具有良好的性能，甚至超过碳布阳极的性能。
