Supercapacitive operational mode in microbial fuel cell

Supercapacitive microbial fuel cells (SC-MFCs) are an emerging and promising field that has captured the attention of scientists in the past few years. This hybridization consists in the integration of supercapacitive features in the MFC electrodes to boost the performance output. The MFC anaerobic and aerobic enviroments induce self-polarization of the electrodes. The electrodes can be discharged galvanostatically and then self-recharged by the biotic/abiotic environments. During the discharge, two main phenomena named electrostatic and faradaic take place but the separation and quantification of the two contributes seems to be challenging. Galvanostatic discharges of SC-MFC produce at least one order of magnitude higher current/power compared with continuous operations, making it promising for pulsed type applications.