Microbial fuel cell as a biosensor and a power source for flora health monitoring

Microbial Fuel Cells are a promising technology for many different applications like wastewater treatment and energy supply system for monitoring hostile environments. In this article, we discuss and analyze the possibility to use jointly a small scale MFC as an energy source and a biosensor to monitor the health of the plants, with an embedded wireless sensor node. We present the prototype of the MFC and the embedded system powered by the electric energy generated by bacteria. The rate of energy generation is used as a feedback on plant's health state. Finally, we demonstrate that the amount of scavenged energy is sufficient to power on even some external sensors embedded in the wireless node.