title: Understanding energy loss in parallelly connected microbial fuel cells: Non-Faradaic current.
abstract: In this work, the mechanisms of energy loss in parallel connection of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) is explored using two MFC units producing different open circuit voltage (OCV) and current. In open circuit mode, non-Faradaic current flows in low OCV unit, implying energy loss caused by different OCVs in parallelly stacked MFCs. In a stacked MFC in parallel under close circuit mode, it is confirmed that energy loss occurs until the working voltage in high OCV unit becomes identical to the other unit having low OCV. This result indicates that different voltage between individual MFC units can cause energy loss due to both non-Faradic and Faradaic current that flow from high voltage unit to low voltage unit even in parallelly stacked MFCs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L3G1, Canada.
authors.forename: Junyeong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: An
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L3G1, Canada.
authors.forename: Junyoung
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sim
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.
authors.forename: Yujie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L3G1, Canada. Electronic address: hyungsool@uwaterloo.ca.
authors.forename: Hyung-Sool
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D001674:Bioelectric Energy Sources; D003246:Conservation of Energy Resources / Q000379:methods*; D004560:Electricity; D004566:Electrodes; D004583:Electrons; D008962:Models, Theoretical
keywords: Energy loss; Microbial fuel cell; Parallel connection; Series connection