Available online at www.scholarsresearchlibrary.com Scholars Research Library European Journal of Applied Engineering and Scientific Research, 2012, 1 (4):185-189 (http://scholarsresearchlibrary.com/archive.html) ISSN: 2278 – 0041 185 Scholars Research Library Fundamentals and Field Application of Microbial Fuel cells (MFCs) A. Oji, C.C. Opara and M.K. Oduola Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Port Harcourt, PMB 5323, Port Harcourt, NIGERIA _____________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT Introduction of Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) technology has shown metabolic degradation of wide range organic substrates in wastewater and sludge. Intensified studies are geared towards elucidation behavior of bacteria in the process. This review presents the fundamentals of MFC technology and its application as power source for subsea and biomedical devices as well as biotreatment of wastewater. A wide variety of industrial, agro/agro allied and domestic wastewater as sources of organic and inorganic substrate is effectively converted to electricity with about 40-90% COD and BOD reduction, while achieving applicable power generation and Columbic efficiency. A good knowledge of the MFC is required for sustainable improvement of the MFC application. Keywords: microbial fuel cell; electricity generation; biotreatment; wastewater _____________________________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION The dwindling fate of the world’s major energy source in terms of depletion and its environmental effect has put stockholders on the quest for a ‘greener’, more sustainable, environmentally friendly and cost effective energy source [1, 2]. The role fossil fuel plays in global warming and the impact of crude oil handling facility has heightened the desire for a more reliable energy source. Microbial Fuel Cell Technology (MFC), an energy recovery process, which converts biodegradable organic substrate into energy, has gain wide research interest. MFC produces energy from a variety of wastewater including industrial, domestic and synthetic wastewater [2-5]. This makes the MFC technology a veritable and complimentary source of energy over the fossil fuel providing the energy supply and waste treatment [5-9]. The potency of the MFC in energy generation has been widely studied. Energy is been harvested from various wastewater sources including industrial brewery wastewater [10, 11, 13] Paper wastewater [10, 11], Sugar processing [10, 12], Agro allied wastewater [2, 13, 14, 15, 16] and Domestic wastewater [17] and Synthetic water [2, 18] While the MFC is studied vigorous in the past six to seven years, resulting in the development of several MFC configuration and higher electricity harvesting MFC setup, there are many limitations in the system leading to few field application. Scale-up, high production cost and low electricity generation has been sported as areas that needed to be improved upon in the MFC technology.