Evaluation of the Electricity Generation Potential from Plant Biomass through Microbial Fuel Cells

Abstract

Great amounts of vegetable waste are generated globally every year, which must be treated or, even, exploited to avoid environmental issues and improve resource use efficiency. This review analysis how to transform vegetable waste into glucose by means of acid hydrolysis and use the produced sugar as carbon source on Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) for energy generation. The research includes 18 papers that describe the hydrolyzation of 7 kinds of biomass into glucose, and 19 papers that study the electrical generation on glucose-fed MFCs. The highest power per glucose and glucose yield estimated were 5052 mW/g of glucose and 538 g of glucose/kg (of potato peal), respectively; corresponding to a biomass power of 2.8 kW/kg of potato peal. When sugarcane bagasse is analyzed, the highest glucose yield was 181.9 g/kg of bagasse, corresponding to a biomass power of 0.9 kW/kg of bagasse. Although MFCs are not a fully developed alternative to energy production yet, these results show its applicability.