The generation of industrious waste and the burning of fossil fuels has created an existential crisis for modern society, whereby solutions to these problems will require the innovation of waste-to-energy technologies that simultaneously meet renewable energy demands without further contributing to the problem. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are a promising technology which utilize microbe-substrate interactions as a vehicle for green energy production. Therefore, expanding the utility of waste-to-energy technologies will require the development of tunable biopolymer composites to address the major charge transfer limitations in current MFC designs. This work aims to design a conductive polysaccharide network (i.e., agarose and alginate) using thermal and photochemical radical initiated polymerization of polyaniline at the decarboxylated regions of the polymer backbone. Initial results indicate that the addition of photochemically polymerized polyaniline established uniform distributions of conducting polymer throughout the polymer matrix. Current voltage (I-V) sweeps of photopolymerized polyaniline composites show enhanced current flow and reduced internal resistance compared to current carbon cloth technologies, as well as thermally polymerized (no UV light) and non-functionalized polysaccharide systems. Additionally, I-V performance is highly dependent on the type of photoinitator (i.e., Fe<sup>3+</sup>, Cu<sup>2+</sup>, camphor) incorporated into the polymer network, highlighting the importance of coordinated complexation between the photoinitator and the carboxylate groups along the polysaccharide backbone. These enhanced current-voltage properties have been realized in a mediator-less E. coli MFC system over a period of 48 hours, with the mediator-less system exhibiting increased open circuit potentials comparable to similar mediated carbon cloth MFC systems. In addition to I-V performance, the application of conductive bioscaffold polymer electrodes in MFCs indicate the vast capacity of these tunable composites to be used as a conduit for various mediator-less electron transfer applications.

Development of polymer nanocomposite electrode for enhanced mediator-less electron transfer in microbial fuel cells

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.