Ray Hilton’s Blog

Those scientists have worked out a mathematical model of bacteria in the fuel-cell, which will allow significant optimisations of the technology:

“Modeling the potential in the biofilm anode, we now have a handle on how the MFC is working and why. We can predict how much voltage we get and how to maximize the power output by tweaking the various factors,” said Marcus. For example, the team has shown that the biofilm produces more current when the biofilm thickness is at a happy medium, not too thick or thin.

“If the biofilm is too thick,” said Marcus, “the electrons have to travel too far to get to the anode. On the other hand, if the biofilm is too thin, it has too few bacteria to extract the electrons rapidly from the fuel.”