(558an) Chinese Ink Modified Stainless Steel As a High Performance Anode in a Microbial Fuel Cell

mso-line-height-rule:exactly">Chinese
ink modified stainless steel as a high performance
anode

mso-line-height-rule:exactly">in a
microbial fuel cell

Haoliang Wu, Zipeng Ye, Yumeng Huang, Zhongjian Li*

normal">College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang
University

normal">Hangzhou 310027, China

normal">e-mail address: none;text-underline:none">zdlizj@zju.edu.cn

normal">

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can transfer chemically-fixed energy into
electricity through electrochemically active microorganisms (EAMs) in the anode
chamber, which oxidize organics and donate electrons to anode. MFCs have
various potential applications in energy generation, wastewater treatment and biosensing.
However, developing high performance and low cost
anodes, accelerating electron transfer between EAMs and anode, are crucial for
MFCs. Carbon nanotubes, have been widely used to prepare anode with large
specific surface area and excellent stability and conductivity. However, the
high cost hinders its application. In this study, a Chinese ink modified
stainless steel electrode was developed as a low-cost and high
performance electrode materials for MFCs. Chinese ink (CI) has been used
as a writing material in a long history in China. It contains plenty of carbon
nanoparticles range from 10 to 150 nm, which possess large surface area and
high conductivity. Hence, CI can be an ideal substitute for carbon nanotubes.
CI was modified onto the stainless steel mesh with electropolymerization of pyrrole, which formed a conductive
polypyorole layer as the binder. The fabricated electrode
possesses high mechanical strength and good conductivity. Carbon particles
cover on stainless steel mesh uniformly owing to excellent dispersibility of CI
in aqueous solution. Because of attachment of carbon particles, electrochemical
active surface area has been improved 1.9 times (44.5 cm²). Compared
with the electrode without Chinese ink, the modified electrode shows a 30%
shorten in start-up time (36.4¡À3.3h) and a 33% increase in maximum current (12.4¡À1.4
mA).The maximum Power density of modified electrode (61.9
mWm^-2) is 2.3 times higher than the unmodified one. It also shows good
stability that it can keep output voltage at high level more than 500 h in MFC.
This simple fabrication strategy offers a new idea of developing low cost and high performance electrode materials for MFCs.

" times new roman>(a) Chronoamperometric
current versus time at a potential of 0.1 V; (b) Barplot
of the maximum current production with statistics; (c) Barplot
of the Start-up Time with statistics