In order to improve the potential of Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) as an applicable technology, the main challenge is to engineer practical systems for bioenergy production at larger scales and to test how the prototypes withstand the challenges occurring during the prolonged operation under constant feeding regime with real waste stream. This work presents the performance assessment of low-cost ceramic MFCs in the individual, stacked (modular) and modular cascade (3 modules) configurations during long term operation up to 19 months, utilising neat human urine as feedstock. During 1 year, the performance of the individual MFC units reached up to 1.56 mW (22.3 W/m3), exhibiting only 20% power loss on day 350 which was significantly smaller in comparison to conventional proton or cation exchange membranes. The stack module comprising 22 MFCs reached up to 21.4 mW (11.9 W/m3) showing power recovery to the initial output levels after 580 days, whereas the 3-module cascade reached up to 75 mW (13.9 W/m3) of power, showing 20% power loss on day 446. In terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, the 3-module cascade configuration achieved a cumulative reduction of >92%, which is higher than that observed in the single module (56%).

中文翻译：

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单个和堆叠配置的陶瓷微生物燃料电池的长期生物能。

为了提高微生物燃料电池（MFCs）作为一种适用技术的潜力，主要挑战是设计用于大规模生产生物能源的实用系统，并测试原型如何承受在恒定进料条件下长时间运行期间所遇到的挑战真正的废物流。这项工作介绍了使用纯净的人类尿液作为原料，在长达19个月的长期运行过程中，低成本，低成本的陶瓷MFC在单独，堆叠（模块化）和模块化级联（3个模块）配置下的性能评估。在1年内，单个MFC单元的性能高达1.56 mW（22.3 W / m3），在350天时仅表现出20％的功率损耗，与传统的质子或阳离子交换膜相比，功率损耗要小得多。