Plant Microbial Fuel Cells for Sustainable source of bioelectricity Generation

Abstract

The growing population is responsible for energy consumption all over the world resulting in the depletion of the fossil fuel reservoir. In recent decades out of many techniques, Microbial fuel cell (MFC) have served as three stop solution for electricity production, reducing global warming, producing value added products while simultaneously remediating wastewater. However, MFCs have certain limitation in terms of upscaling mainly due to exhaustion of organic matter at anode. The plant microbial fuel cell (P-MFC) having plants rooted at anode are reliable when it comes to continuous supply of organic matter at anode and thus are considered as a potential and sustainable source of green energy. Here, the solar energy gets converted into bioelectricity via electrochemical reactions in the roots of plant, at the anode separated by cathode chamber of the microbial fuel cell. The P-MFC provides clean and renewable energy, is eco-friendly and cost-effective. The P-MFC also produces, bio-methane, biohydrogen as by products, besides the products produced by plant itself. It is one of the emerging techniques for bioenergy, and also facing just like other microbial fuel cell based techniques challenge to increase the power density as well its long-term performance on commercial scale. This review discusses briefly about conventional MFC and elaborates plant-microbe consortium at rhizosphere region of a plant, for wide scope production of bioelectricity from P-MFC. Additionally, the parameters influencing P-MFC efficiency, the mechanism involved and challenges have also been narrated.