Bioremediation of Pollutants and Sustainable Energy Production through Bacterial Activities in Microbial Fuel Cells: An Overview

Abstract

Electrical energy generation can be achieved in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) through the catalytic action of microorganisms which can oxidize organic matter and convert it into a biofilm. In MFCs, the exoelectrogens play a crucial role. MFCs is eco-friendly promising technology that produces electricity from various organic substrates. It is a novel and environmentally friendly approach for bioremediation and sustainable electricity production. The fact that heavy metals contributing adversely to the environmental pollution thus the microbial fuel cell technology has a solution for this as well, performing the removal and recovery of heavy metals by using both single and doublechambered MFCs. Many studies show that the new strains of microbes can produce power densities individually as high as strains from mixed communities. However, the implementation of this technology is just limited to the laboratory scale because of a few challenges like low efficiencies, low production rates. This review article focuses an introduction about the role and mechanism of different microorganisms towards energy production, biofilm formation, high power producing microbes inside the microorganisms, the electron transfer mechanism to the electrodes and vice-versa and the removal of heavy metals.