Design mining microbial fuel cell cascades

Preen, Richard; You, Jiseon; Bull, Larry; Ieropoulos, Ioannis A.

Abstract

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) perform wastewater treatment and electricity production through the conversion of organic matter using microorganisms. For practical applications, it has been suggested that greater efficiency can be achieved by arranging multiple MFC units into physical stacks in a cascade with feedstock flowing sequentially between units. In this article, we investigate the use of cooperative coevolution to physically explore and optimise (potentially) heterogeneous MFC designs in a cascade, i.e., without simulation. Conductive structures are 3D printed and inserted into the anodic chamber of each MFC unit, augmenting a carbon fibre veil anode and affecting the hydrodynamics, including the feedstock volume and hydraulic retention time, as well as providing unique habitats for microbial colonisation. We show that it is possible to use design mining to identify new conductive inserts that increase both the cascade power output and power density.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 28, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 7, 2018
• Publication Date: Jul 31, 2019
• Deposit Date: Feb 28, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 8, 2018
• Journal: Soft Computing
• Print ISSN: 1432-7643
• Electronic ISSN: 1433-7479
• Publisher: Springer (part of Springer Nature)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 13
• Pages: 4673-7643
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-018-3117-x
• Keywords: 3D printing, cascade stacks, cooperative coevolution, microbial fuel cell, shape optimisation
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/871163
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-018-3117-x
• Additional Information: Additional Information : The dataset for this study is available from the UWE Research Data Repository: http://researchdata.uwe.ac.uk/217
• Contract Date: Feb 28, 2018