Energy Harvesting Technology for Microbial Fuel Cells

One benefit of electricity generation directly in a microbial fuel cell (MFC) from waste biomass is that it can produce high-columbic efficiency green energy. The output voltage and power density of the Microbial Fuel Cell are quite low, even though it can produce green energy from waste. The output voltage ranges from 300mV to 800mV and its power density is around 100 – 2000 mW/m<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>. Meanwhile, most electronics devices require above 3.3 V to operate. Therefore, there is a need to boost this output voltage and power to usable levels for electronic devices. Therefore, this paper proposes various energy harvesting technologies to raise the voltage of MFC to usable form. Future work will concentrate on creating a power management system (PMS) with ultralow power consumption components that is optimized for MFC operation.