From waste to watts in micro-devices: Review on development of Membraned and Membraneless Microfluidic Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract Evidently, the incessant interest to work on the ways to generate renewable and sustainable energy, there is even deeper concern to work on was to harvest energy from waste. Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) is one such method with exponentially growing attention, where not only the power output is achieved, but potentially it can be utilized in diverse applications, such as water monitoring and toxicity detection, screening of microorganisms and environmental strains, etc. However, it is pertinent to eradicate the associate challenges, such as performance, cost, automation and amenability to scale up, etc., to enable in leveraging its unique features. A lot of work is going on to use the unique properties of Microscale to address such challenges. At such scale, various components of MFC are being optimized and integrated to develop microscale or miniaturized MFC. Performance of such Microscale MFC can be further enriched if the system is under laminal-flow, called Microfluidic MFC (MMFC), which enables a distinctive platform capable to power mini electronic components, such as implantable pacemakers and wireless network, as biosensor. It is even more exciting to note that MMFC can also be devoid of membrane due to exclusive Microfluidic properties and can be stacked to harvest large powers. This present work encompasses various aspects to develop MMFC, both in membranes and membraneless case, such as the unique Microfluidics properties promising to develop MMFC, design and development considerations, various fabrication methods, performance analysis, etc. The review further describes the current challenges and future opportunities in MMFC, and provides a roadmap for diverse technological applications. Cohesively, this review provides a rigorous review to the researchers, policy-makers and application engineers working in this field.