Comparison of Conduction Based and Mediator Based Models for Microbial Fuel Cells

Abstract

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are processes used for simultanuous bioenergy capturing and waste treatment. In this study, a model for MFCs based upon a conduction mechanism for electron transfer is proposed, which integrates substrate utilization, current production and conduction and microbial distribution and growth in batch flow mode. The outputs of the model and that of a mediator based model are compared with respect to reference experimental results under a well controled conditions using time evolution of produced current. The comparison shows that the electron shuttling mechanism appears to fail to predict the experimental data accurately enough while the conduction based model is able to reproduce measurements consistently.