title: Electrochemical surface modification of carbon mesh anode to improve the performance of air-cathode microbial fuel cells.
abstract: A convenient and promising alternative to surface modification of carbon mesh anode was fulfilled by electrochemical oxidation in the electrolyte of nitric acid or ammonium nitrate at ambient temperature. It was confirmed that such an anode modification method was low cost and effective not only in improving the efficiency of power generation in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) for synthetic wastewater treatment, but also helping to reduce the period for MFCs start-up. The MFCs with anode modification in electrolyte of nitric acid performed the best, achieving a Coulombic efficiency enhancement of 71 %. As characterized, the electrochemical modification resulted in the decrease of the anode potential and internal resistance but the increase of current response and nitrogen-containing and oxygen-containing functional groups on the carbon surface, which might contribute to the enhancement on the performances of MFCs.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology (Tianjin University of Science & Technology), Ministry of Education, Tianjin Key Lab of Industrial Microbiology, College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, 300457, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jianmei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Meiling
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chi
authors.forename: Hongyu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Huanhuan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Minghua
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000388:Air; D001674:Bioelectric Energy Sources; D002244:Carbon; D055664:Electrochemical Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D004566:Electrodes; D056951:Photoelectron Spectroscopy; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon