Vigolo Daniele, Al-Housseiny Talal T, Shen Yi, Akinlawon Fiyinfoluwa O, Al-Housseiny Saif T, Hobson Ronald K, Sahu Amaresh, Bedkowski Katherine I, DiChristina Thomas J, Stone Howard A
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2014 Jun 28;16(24):12535-43. doi: 10.1039/c4cp01086h.
The integration of Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) in a microfluidic geometry can significantly enhance the power density of these cells, which would have more active bacteria per unit volume. Moreover, microfluidic MFCs can be operated in a continuous mode as opposed to the traditional batch-fed mode. Here we investigate the effect of fluid flow on the performance of microfluidic MFCs. The growth and the structure of the bacterial biofilm depend to a large extent on the shear stress of the flow. We report the existence of a range of flow rates for which MFCs can achieve maximum voltage output. When operated under these optimal conditions, the power density of our microfluidic MFC is about 15 times that of a similar-size batch MFC. Furthermore, this optimum suggests a correlation between the behaviour of bacteria and fluid flow.
将微生物燃料电池（MFC）集成到微流体结构中，可以显著提高这些电池的功率密度，因为每单位体积会有更多的活性细菌。此外，与传统的分批进料模式不同，微流体MFC可以连续模式运行。在此，我们研究流体流动对微流体MFC性能的影响。细菌生物膜的生长和结构在很大程度上取决于流动的剪切应力。我们报告了一系列流速的存在，在这些流速下MFC可以实现最大电压输出。在这些最佳条件下运行时，我们的微流体MFC的功率密度约为类似尺寸分批MFC的15倍。此外，这种最佳状态表明细菌行为与流体流动之间存在相关性。
