Bioelectricity recovery from food waste using microbial fuel cell: Recent advances

In recent years, there has been a significant accumulation of waste in the environment and it is expected that this accumulation may increase in the years to come. Waste disposal has massive effects on the environment and can cause serious environmental problems. Thus, the development of a waste treatment system is of major importance. For the majority of municipal solid waste food waste is considered to be the main contributor. Food wastes are mainly rich in organic substances and have a relatively high amount of energy. As a result, an effective food waste treatment system has several benefits including energy recovery and waste stabilization. To reduce the impact of the consumption of fossil energy sources on our planet, the exploitation of renewable sources has been relaunched. All over the world efforts have been made to recover energy from food waste, taking into account global energy security as the final goal. To attain this objective, several technologies and recovery methods have been developed in recent years. The microbial fuel cell (MFC) is one of them. This presents good potential for the production of electricity from food waste. Living things produce carbon molecules which are in reduced forms which can be oxidized in the presence of oxygen from the air. The respiratory chain of living beings is also based on this principle. It is, therefore, possible to develop a microbial fuel cell to generate electricity using several chemical agents playing an important role of mediator by catalyzing the generation of electric charges. This article is, therefore, an exploratory overview of the generation of electricity using a microbial fuel cell (MFC), along with the usefulness of food waste in MFCs.