Green Energy Recovery from Food Waste Using Microbial Fuel Cell - A Mini Review

Anbazhagi Muthukumar^*, Shilpa, V. & Muthukumar Muthuchamy

Department of Environmental Science, School of Earth Science Systems, Central University of Kerala, India

Dr. Anabzhagi Muthukumar, Department of Environmental Science, School of Earth Science Systems, Central University of Kerala, India.

Keywords: Electricity Demand; Food Waste; Microbial Fuel Cell; Renewable Energy; Waste Management

Abstract

Nowadays, the disposal of waste on environment has increased drastically and it is predicted to increase even more in the near future. Waste disposal, has massive environmental impacts and can cause serious problems to the environment. Food waste is considered as one of the major source of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) globally. Meanwhile, food waste is an organic rich solid waste which has a relatively high energy content, and it seems ideal to achieve dual benefits from energy recovery and waste stabilization. The recent development in the global energy sector is making efforts in turning food waste to wealth, especially in consideration of the global energy security. Several technologies have been developed to serve this purpose, but Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) shows a very good potential in generation of electricity from food waste, where microbial gel battery can be developed to generate electric current with the help of several chemicals acting as an excellent mediator to encourage the generation of electrical charges. MFC technique can be adopted on a small, medium and large scale applications. Scaling up of this technology, could fetch electrical output by several orders of magnitude, through the connection of an array of biological based fuel cells. In this article, an overview of energy recovery using Microbial Fuel Cell as well as the importance of food waste as a substrate in MFC were mentioned.

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