Modelling microbial fuel cells for bioelectricity production

• Main Author: Wong, Sai Leong.
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Chemical engineering::Biotechnological production
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45341
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Microbial fuel cell has been seen a promising alternative source of energy due to its ability to harvest energy from organic waste by using anode respiring bacteria. However this energy source is still at its infant stage due to the lack of understanding in the interaction between anode respiring bacteria(ARB) and the anode. The currents that are produced by microbial fuel cells now are not practical for usage. Intense experiments have been carried out to understand the interactions between ARB and the anode in hope of increasing the current production to a practical level. Huge amount of resources are needed to carry out each of this experiment, therefore computer simulations have been introduced as a method to replace these experiments to find out the parameters that are affecting the ARB in current production. In this project, the interactions between ARB and the anode have been studied carefully in order to understand how they contribute to the current production. After that, a few models from other papers have been repeated in order to understand and learn how a mathematical model that resembles a real biofilm is being made. The models that have been repeated include the model from the paper “Conduction-based modeling of the biofilm anode of a microbial fuel cell” and the paper “Modeling and simulation of two-chamber microbial fuel cell”. Finally, we built a mathematical model that resembles a microbial fuel cell that uses carbon powder mixed single layer artificial biofilm at the anode.