Electrochemical Losses and Its Role in Power Generation of Microbial Fuel Cells

Microbial fuel cells (MFC) is an emergent source of renewable energy technology, where the microbes are incorporated in an electrochemical system with organic loads, for controlled production of electricity from wastewater due to the catalytic action of anode respiring microbes under the anaerobic condition. Considering the redox potential of electrochemical reactions, MFC with oxygen as terminal electron acceptor is capable to produce the potential of 1.2 V theoretically However, in real practice, the obtained voltage from MFC is too low s(500–650 mV) due to various electrochemical losses encountered in the MFC, which further affects the power density. The state of the art review focused in this chapter is on the electrochemical losses related hurdles and its role in power generation in the MFCs, which is limiting this technology to be adopted widely and considerably efficient. Though the power production from MFC is being impelled by various governing aspects such as the selection of microbial strains, substrate conditions, electrodes materials, and operating conditions, researchers have attempted various studies to overcome the electrochemical losses thus making MFCs ideal for real-time applications.