Assessment of biomass material as valuable electrode for high energy performance in microbial fuel cell with biodegradation of organic pollutant

Microbial fuel cells (MFC) have become a more popular bio-electrochemical approach due to their environmental friendliness and sustainability. The anode is a vital component of the MFC, and its unstable material remains one of the primary causes of poor electron transportation throughout the reactor operations. This study seeks to improve MFC electron transport and naphthalene biodegradation by employing modified palm kernel shell (PKS)-based anode electrodes. These anode fabrications were successfully developed through the combination of PKS-based rGO hybridized into metal oxide modifiers (ZnO and TiO₂). The anode electrodes were subsequently assigned PKS-rGO, PKS-rGO/TiO₂, and PKS-rGO/ZnO. The power density displayed for PKS-rGO was 35.1 mW/m², whereas the power density for the PKS-rGO/TiO₂ composite anode was found to be 38.2 mW/m². On the other hand, PKS-rGO/ZnO had a maximum power density of 45.4 mW/m². The maximum current density (CD) in the anode PKS-rGO/ZnO was 114.0 mA/m², indicating a comparable pattern of power output. Bacillus sp. and Niallia sp. were identified as exo-electrogens in the microbial study. In the MFC operation, the highest biodegradation efficiency was 85.50 % in the PKS-rGO settings, 92.80 % in PKS-rGO/TiO₂, and 94.30 % in PKS-rGO/ZnO. SEM and microbiological studies revealed that our anodes were highly biocompatible with microbes. Furthermore, this result proposes future research directions for the mortality of anodic microbial communities in MFC.