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Microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) are emerging sustainable power generation technologies that can be used for biohydrogen production and wastewater treatment. The prospect for hydrogen gas as a vehicle fuel suitable for the environment is enormous. MEC serves as a reactor for producing biohydrogen by mixing MFC with electrolysis. MECs are the most sustainable, clean, and effective ways to produce biohydrogen. Effective aspects impacting H 2 production, including microbial culture, electrodes, membrane, and substrate, have been explored for greater comprehension of creating MEC technology-based hydrogen generation. The present issues with effective scale-up include the costly production expenses of microbial electrolysis cells, their significant internal resistance, methanogenesis, and membrane/cathode biofouling. This review examines the various operational parameters in optimization studies that influence overall hydrogen generation. This paper also presents strategies to overcome the constraints listed above by creating effective architecture, including several reactor designs, biological, and physical properties, and the use of various operational conditions for improved hydrogen production. This study summarizes recent developments and several other operating factors (organic loading, ionic strength, hydraulic retention time, applied voltage, etc.) that affect hydrogen production in an MEC system. The paper outlines the present technical difficulties and offers practical future ideas for addressing the constraints. [Display omitted] • MEC has great efficiency in hydrogen recovery and concurrent waste conversion. • Microbial culture, electrodes, membrane, and substrate affect H 2 production in MEC. • Scale-up constraints: high costs, internal resistance, methanogenesis, and biofouling. • Modifying strain, nanoparticles, and reactor design can help in overcoming this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen gas has tremendous potential as an environmentally acceptable energy carrier for vehicles. A cutting edge technology called a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) can achieve sustainable and clean hydrogen production from a wide range of renewable biomass and wastewaters. Enhancing the hydrogen production rate and lowering the energy input are the main challenges of MEC technology. MEC reactor design is one of the crucial factors which directly influence on hydrogen and current production rate in MECs. The rector design is also a key factor to up-scaling. Traditional MEC designs incorporated membranes, but it was recently shown that membrane-free designs can lead to both high hydrogen recoveries and production rates. Since then multiple studies have developed reactors that operate without membranes. This review provides a brief overview of recent advances in research on scalable MEC reactor design and configurations.

Microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) is a potentially attractive green technology to tackle the global warming and energy crisis, which employs electrochemically active bacteria to convert organic matter into hydrogen or a wide range of chemicals, such as methane, acetate, hydrogen peroxide, ethanol, and formic acid, without causing environmental pollution. Until now, probably the cleanest and the most efficient method of producing hydrogen has been MEC. However, this technology is still in its infancy period and poses various challenges towards up-scaling and widespread applications, such as such as lower hydrogen production rate (HPR), high internal resistance, complicated architecture, and expensive materials. New advances are needed in biofilm engineering, materials for electrodes and reactor configuration for successful real-world application of this technology. Thus, the present review deals with development of practical MEC technology and includes the following sections: firstly a general introduction to MECs; their operating principles, thermodynamics of MEC, and energy or voltage losses in the MEC system were provided. Followed by a section on the critical factors affecting MEC performance; microorganisms, anode, cathode, membrane or separator, fuel sources, the state-of-art MECs designs, other key operational factors, and its potential application in microbial production of value added products are discussed in detail. Afterwards, current challenges involved in developing practical MEC systems are highlighted, and outlooks for future development are also suggested. The review aims to assist researcher and engineers to gain fundamental understandings of MEC, and it also provides several future research directions and a road map on how to overcome the barriers, so the MEC technology can be further advanced and applied in larger scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen gas has tremendous potential as an environmentally acceptable energy carrier for vehicles. A cutting edge technology called a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) can achieve sustainable and clean hydrogen production from a wide range of renewable biomass and wastewaters. Enhancing the hydrogen production rate and lowering the energy input are the main challenges of MEC technology. MEC reactor design is one of the crucial factors which directly influence on hydrogen and current production rate in MECs. The rector design is also a key factor to up-scaling. Traditional MEC designs incorporated membranes, but it was recently shown that membrane-free designs can lead to both high hydrogen recoveries and production rates. Since then multiple studies have developed reactors that operate without membranes. This review provides a brief overview of recent advances in research on scalable MEC reactor design and configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) are generally regarded as a promising future technology for manufacturing green hydrogen from organic material present in wastewaters and other renewable energy sources. However, the development of inexpensive and high-efficient cathode catalyst is the most critical challenge for MECs to become a commercialized H 2 production technology. In this study, a non-noble metal electroformed Ni mesh cathode alternatives to typical cathode material (Pt/CC) was intensively examined in a single-chamber membrane-free MEC. To the best of our knowledge, the use of electroformed Ni mesh as the MEC cathode catalyst has not been reported so far. The MEC was operated in fed-batch mode and the performance of the Ni mesh cathode was compared with that of Pt/CC cathode in terms of columbic efficiencies (75 ± 4% vs. 72.7 ± 1%), overall hydrogen recovery (89.3 ± 4% vs. 90.9 ± 3%), overall energy efficiency (62.9 ± 5% vs. 69.1 ± 2%), the maximum volumetric hydrogen production rate (4.18 ± 1 m 3 H 2 /m 3 d vs. 4.25 ± 1 m 3 H 2 /m 3 d), volumetric current density (312 ± 9 A/m 3 vs. 314 ± 5 A/m 3 ). The obtained results in this study highlight the great potential of using the electroformed Ni mesh catalysts as a viable cathode material for hydrogen production in MECs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study evaluated hydrogen production and chemical oxygen demand removal (COD removal) from tapioca wastewater using anaerobic mixed cultures in anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR). The ABR was conducted based on the optimum condition obtained from the batch experiment, i.e. 2.25 g/L of FeSO4 and initial pH of 9.0. The effects of the varying hydraulic retention times (HRT: 24, 18, 12, 6 and 3 h) on hydrogen production and COD removal in a continuous ABR were operated at room temperature (32.3 ± 1.5 °C). Hydrogen production rate (HPR) increased with a reduction in HRT i.e. from 164.45 ± 4.14 mL H2/L.d (24 h HRT) to 883.19 ± 7.89 mL H2/L.d (6 h HRT) then decreased to 748.54 ± 13.84 mL H2/L.d (3 h HRT). COD removal increased with reduction in HRT i.e. from 14.02 ± 0.58% (24 h HRT) to 29.30 ± 0.84% (6 h HRT) then decreased to 21.97 ± 0.94% (3 h HRT). HRT of 6 h was the optimum condition for ABR operation as indicated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The effects of concentration of electrolytes on hydrogen production rate (HPR) at different applied voltages were experimentally evaluated in this research paper. The rate of hydrogen production was found to be directly proportional to the concentration of total dissolved solids and the efficiency did not change much with the change in the concentration of solids. Sensitivity analysis of the electrolysis system was also carried out to understand the relative importance of concentration of total dissolved solids (TDS) on the HPR, which can help for an optimum design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]