The effects of food type on mediator-less microbial fuel cell electricity output

Clean power production is a heavily investigated topic in science today. The journey to find a clean, sustainable power source capable of producing enough energy to power an entire city is still in progress. Among the developments of different methods, the microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a promising idea, harnessing microbes to generate power through consumption of organic substances. In this investigation, we compared the different power outputs from using various foods as fuel sources, including sugar, cheese, and grapes. We hypothesized that different types of food, when placed inside the MFC, will produce different amounts of power. From the experiment, we observed a higher energy output for the sugar solution which suggests the potential energy output generated by the MFC of Shewanella putrefaciens is indeed affected by the fuel source used. From this study we have shown that the type of fuel used to power an MFC plays an instrumental role in the efficiency of the MFC and should be of the utmost importance when developing MFCs in the future.