ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a power management system to harvest electrical energy from MFCs. The system realizes the application of microbial fuel cells.
2 THE WORKING PRINCIPLE OF MFCS
Microbial fuel cells consist of anode, cathode and Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM), as shown in Figure 1. Organic matter is decomposed by
1 INTRODUCTION
Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are regarded as a sustainable and promising approach for wastewater treatment and bio-production. MFCs transform biomass energy in organic matters into electricity[1]. The cells can also be used to produce bio-production or bioremediation at the same time, such as hydrogen production[2], desulfuration[3], denitrification[5]. The waste water in the sewage plant or benthal deposit is able to be the fuel for MFCs, which is abundant in daily life. On account of the low power output, the electricity generated by MFCs was not utilized to drive loads several years ago. Multiple factors will influence the operation of MFCs, including microorganisms, electrodes, fuels and proton exchange membrane[1]. MFCs are attractive for powering remote wireless monitoring system. Coupled with the development of MFCs and electronic technique, some electricity energy harvesting systems have been proposed in recent years. Yangming Gong et al. used MFC and backup battery to charge a 200 F ultra-capacitor and the voltage was boosted to 7 V to power an acoustic modem and temperature sensor[6]. Lewandowski et al. put forward an energy harvesting system consisting of charge pump and capacitor[7]. Peter K. Wu et al. proposed a booster circuit to increase the voltage of a cell to a maximum of 3 V, yet the oscillator controller needs applied voltage to activate[8]. Jae-Do Park et al. presented a synchronous boost converter based on inductance and transistor, the power conversion efficiency was 75.9%, not including the energy consumption of the hysteresis controller[9].
