Renewable Energy, Vol.150, 156-166, 2020
Antimony-tin based intermetallics supported on reduced graphene oxide as anode and MnO2@rGO as cathode electrode for the study of microbial fuel cell performance
The development of clean sources of energy is important as the world is threatened by global warming and other serious consequences. The microbial fuel cell technology is considered as clean technology for the production of clean energy. The electrode materials used in the microbial fuel cell decides the major cost of MFCs. The use of novel antimony-tin based anode material and manganese dioxide as cathode material is demonstrated here. The present study discusses the synthesis and application of SnSb@rGO, Sb SnSb@rGO and Sb SnO2@rGO as anode electrode in three different microbial fuel cells for studying their performance, while using MnO2@rGO as cathode in all the setups. The synthesized materials were analysed for their structural characterisation by means of X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, field mission scanning electron microscopy. Performance analysis of all MFCs are carried out to obtain polarization curves, maximum power density, current density, COD removal percentage and substrate degradation percentage. The results indicate that among the three MFCs, The MFC with Sb SnSb@rGO prepared with Zn dust showed higher performance. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:SnSb electrocatalyst;Reduced graphene oxide;Bio-catalyst;Microbial fuel cell;Bio-electricity