Production of greener energy in microbial fuel cell with ceramic separator fabricated using native soils: Effect of lattice and porous SiO2

Abstract In this study, ceramic membranes with different compositions have been fabricated and used as a separator in two-chambers microbial fuel cells (MFCs). MFCs performance has been affected by properties of the clayware separator such as porosity, proton exchange, and electrical conductivity as well as the structure of the membrane. To study the effect of SiO2 on the composition of ceramic membrane soil, adding different amounts of SiO2 to two soil samples of Kalporgan and leached Kalporgan’s soil for fabricated ceramic membrane was investigated. The sintering phenomenon in the leaching process was reduced significantly and the membrane acted as an ideal substrate. The addition of SiO2 to the leached soil caused the melting point decreases and the sintering process increases slightly, thus have not a positive effect on the MFCs performance. However, when 30% SiO2 has been added to non-leached soil without proper support, its porous structure had a dominant effect on reducing the melting point, results in better performance of MFCs, decreasing the internal resistance from 977.36 to 115.96 Ω, growing up the current density from 102.00 to 769.23 mA/m2, increasing the power density by approximately 15-fold and gaining colombic efficiency from 27 to 79%.