A Multi-Input Multi-Output Energy Harvesting Architecture for Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

This paper presents an energy harvesting architecture that accommodates two microbial energy sources and delivers power supply synchronously to two loads. The proposed architecture enables the maximum power extraction from the first energy source, whereas the second source is disabled. However, once the first energy source is impaired (i.e., not working), the second energy source becomes the primary energy source in the architecture, and the first energy source is decoupled from the system. The measurement result of the proposed architecture, implemented with the off-the-shelf components and tested with two emulated MFCs, demonstrates a peak efficiency of 56.51%, which is the highest end-to-end efficiency among prior work. The proposed architecture can operate from a minimum input voltage of 0.3 V and simultaneously regulate two outputs to constant voltages of nearly 3.7 V and 5 V.

Keywords

• Burst mode
• energy combiner
• energy harvesting
• energy scavenging
• microbial fuel cell
• multiple input
• multiple loads
• underwater electronic devices
• wireless sensor networks.

Ethical Statement

The study is complied with research and publication ethics.

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