title: Instant power generation from an air-breathing paper and pencil based bacterial bio-fuel cell.
abstract: We present a low-cost, disposable microbial fuel cell fabricated on a paper based platform, having a start-up time of 10 s. The platform deploys ordinary pencil strokes for graphite electrode deposition. The device uses a membrane-less design in a one-time injection (OTI) mode or a continuous capillary driven flow mode (CPF), where oxygen from the atmosphere is used up at the cathode for water formation, leading to the generation of bioelectricity. The performance of the fuel cell is evaluated using two bacterial strains, namely, Pseudomonas aeruginosa IIT BT SS1 and Shewanella putrefaciens. This flexible device is shown to retain bacteria for a period of at least one hour, resulting in the generation of almost 0.4 V using P. aeruginosa and a maximum current of 18 μA using S. putrefaciens without the use of any additional catalysts.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India. ddas@hijli.iitkgp.ernet.in.
authors.forename: Ramya
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Veerubhotla
authors.forename: Aditya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bandopadhyay
authors.forename: Debabrata
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Das
authors.forename: Suman
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chakraborty
mesh_terms: D001674:Bioelectric Energy Sources; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004566:Electrodes; D004867:Equipment Design; D006108:Graphite; D010209:Paper; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa; D020614:Shewanella putrefaciens
chemical_list: D006108:Graphite