Advanced energy harvesting in microbial fuel cells for environmental monitoring

Microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a device which can convert chemical energy into electrical energy directly, it has great utilization potentiality in the field of environmental monitoring and new energy development. The change of current is used to characterize the change of pollutant concentration. The power density of MFCs is so low and unstable that energyharvesting circuits are needed for real world applications. It discusses the different energy harvesting methods, components, and systems that can extract and condition the MFC energy for direct utilization. This paper aims to gain fundamental understandings of these electronic systems and algorithms, and it also supplies research directions and insights on how to cross the barriers. A comprehensive review of the external circuit energy acquisition technology and research for microbial fuel cells, the future research directions and challenges are prospected. It will help the development of high performance of MFC-based biosensors.