†Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, United States.
‡Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado 80204, United States.
Environ Sci Technol. 2015 Mar 17;49(6):3267-77. doi: 10.1021/es5047765. Epub 2015 Feb 24.
The microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology offers sustainable solutions for distributed power systems and energy positive wastewater treatment, but the generation of practically usable power from MFCs remains a major challenge for system scale up and application. Commonly used external resistors will not harvest any usable energy, so energy-harvesting circuits are needed for real world applications. This review summarizes, explains, and discusses the different energy harvesting methods, components, and systems that can extract and condition the MFC energy for direct utilization. This study aims to assist environmental scientists and engineers to gain fundamental understandings of these electronic systems and algorithms, and it also offers research directions and insights on how to overcome the barriers, so the technology can be further advanced and applied in larger scale.
微生物燃料电池 (MFC) 技术为分布式发电系统和能源正的废水处理提供了可持续的解决方案，但从 MFC 中实际产生可用功率仍然是系统规模化和应用的主要挑战。常用的外部电阻器不会收集任何可用的能量，因此需要能量收集电路才能在实际应用中使用。本综述总结、解释和讨论了不同的能量收集方法、组件和系统，这些方法、组件和系统可以提取和调节 MFC 能量，以便直接利用。本研究旨在帮助环境科学家和工程师对这些电子系统和算法有基本的了解，并提供研究方向和见解，以克服障碍，从而进一步推进和应用该技术。
