Biofuel Cells, Performance Characterization

Abstract Biofuel cells are devices for generating electricity from chemical fuels (such as hydrogen and organic compounds) using biological catalysts (i.e. enzymes and/or living microbes) for electrode reactions. They could be divided into two categories based on types of catalysts; namely, enzyme fuel cells (EFCs), and microbial fuel cells (MFCs). In this article, procedures for evaluating biofuel cells are described, since appropriate evaluation is fundamental to developing efficient processes and also for comparing biofuel cells developed in different laboratories. Special focus is on the evaluation of MFCs, since MFCs need more diverse criteria than EFCs for performance evaluation; however, EFC evaluation is also possible using the procedures and parameters described in the article.