Renewable Energy 129 (2018) 824e829

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Feasible use of microbial fuel cells for pollution treatment

Jianjun Hu a, Quanguo Zhang a, Duu-Jong Lee a, b, c, *, Huu Hao Ngo d
a
Collaborative Innovation Center of Biomass Energy, Henan Agricultural University, Henan Province, Zhengzhou, China
b
Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
d
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, NSW
2007, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The microbial fuel cells (MFC) can directly transform chemical energy in feed substance to electricity by
Received 30 December 2016 anodic aspiration pathways. This mini review provides an order-of-magnitude argument that MFC has
Received in revised form much lower catalyst density at electrode surface and much higher diffusional resistance for substrates
28 January 2017
than the chemical fuel cell, the former should not be used as an energy generation unit; rather, it should
Accepted 1 February 2017
Available online 4 February 2017
be applied in low power density level applications such as biofilm wastewater treatment. The literature
studies using MFC for pollution treatment are discussed.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Microbial fuel cell
Environmental applications
Review
Technical obstacle

1. Introduction papers published (628), followed by Journal of Power Sources

The proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are used to
catalytically oxidize hydrogen gas at anode surface and to catalyt-
ically reduce oxygen to form water at cathode surface, with the
produced excess electrons and protons to be transferred by external
circuit and by internal diffusional space across the PEM, respec-
tively [1]. The PEM fuel cells are a power unit with high conversion
efficiency and cleanness [2,3]. The microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a
device mimicking the mechanisms of PEM fuel cells with microbes
attached on anode and/or cathode as the electrode catalysts [4,5].
Tee et al. [6] reviewed the current developments for MFC tech-
nologies, such as electron transfer pathways, formation of biofilm
formation and the intra-biofilm transport processes, and the
alignment for anodic chamber.
The Web of Science™ database search with topic of “microbial
fuel cell” on December 25, 2016 yielded a total of 6198 papers, in
the fields of “biotechnology applied microbiology” (1896), “energy
fuels” (1664), “electrochemistry” (1154) and “environmental sci-
ences” (1006). The authors from USA and PRC contributed 56.9% of
these papers. These papers received 152,997 citations. In all plat-
forms, Bioresource Technology ranked top in number of MFC
* Corresponding author. Collaborative Innovation Center of Biomass Energy,
Henan Agricultural University, Henan Province, Zhengzhou, China.
E-mail address: djlee@ntu.edu.tw (D.-J. Lee).
(246), International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (245). With
“wastewater” being added to the topic search, there are a total 1447
papers being published, with 35,920 citations being received. In
particular, there were 107 papers published in 2016, accounting for
35% of all the published papers. The top publishing platforms are
still Bioresource Technology (218), followed by International Jour-
nal of Hydrogen Energy (65) and Water Research (60). Graciliano
et al. [7] provided a scientometric analysis of the MFC papers
published and their categorization.
This mini-review provides an argument on whether MFC should
be used as a regular power source with proton exchange membrane
fuel cell (PEM FC) as market competitor. The use of MFC as pollution
treatment units is discussed based on contemporary literature.
2. MFC as energy generation unit
2.1. Use of MFC for power generation
The power density level delivered by MFC is the key perfor-
mance parameter for its use as an energy generation unit. Logan [8]
proposed that in the near future the MFC can be used as a practical
energy source since the power density by MFC studies was growing
from less than 0.1 W/m2 in 1999 to 6.9 W/m2 in 2008. Logan [9] and
Fan et al. [10] estimated the ultimate power generation by MFC

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2017.02.001
0960-1481/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 J. Hu et al. / Renewable Energy 129 (2018) 824e829
without internal resistance to be 17e19 W/m3. By assuming full
loading of 20-layer bacterial biofilm with compact packing and a
specific surface area of 100 m2/m3 at all electrodes, Zhang et al. [11]
estimated the ultimate volumetric energy generation and the po-
wer density as 5360 W/m3 and 53.6 W/m2, respectively. Song et al.
[12] applied a logic-based maximum power point tracking algo-
rithm for controlling the resistive load for a continuous-flow flat-
plate MFC. These authors showed that by the optimal controlling
strategy the maximum power density can reach 88 W/m3.
To reduce operational cost, the use of MFC to harvest energy
from waste or wastewater is recommended for future practice [13].
An estimation of the energy contents in the wastewaters can be
made by assuming a typical US city of population of one million
population equivalent with each generating 380 L sewage per day
[14]. The wastewater stream has energy content of 7500 ± 100 kJ/
m3 when all COD is converted to CO2 and H2O [9,15]. Then the total
energy content in the city's wastewater is 2.8
109 kJ/d. Taking
household energy consumption rate of 1 kW, this potential can
power about (10 h/d) 79,000 houses in the city. Since the waste-
water is assume free of charge, then why the wastewater power is
still not in the market?
To make MFC a practical energy generation unit, large reactor
with sufficient energy output should be developed. Following the
proposal by Ref. [9], numerous efforts were made to improve MFC
performances [16]. Zhang et al. [11] demonstrated in their Fig. 2
that the power densities for liter-MFC were generally less than 1 W/
m2. Considering a compact electrode configuration with surface
area up to 100 m2/m3, the power generation rate would be about
100 W/m3. Fig. 1 shows the power density data versus reactor
volume data collected from papers published in 2016 (red sym-
bols). Those presented in Ref. [11] being shown as grey symbols for
comparison. It is clear that the studies updated to 2016 still rarely
provided power density exceeding 1 W/m2 for the liter-scale MFC.
The energy available for use is different from those existing in
the substrate [17]. Restated, the total energy (represented by free
energy) of a wastewater stream is often much smaller than the
available energy (represented by exergy) of the stream since to use
the energy for powering an external device needs extraction of
involved energy to a portable form, that is limited by the potential
differences and all the losses by each conversion stages [18]. Even
Fig. 1. Power density versus anodic chamber volume data. Grey symbols: data from
references cited in Zhang et al. (2016). Red symbols: data from studies published in
2016. Volume indicates either anodic chamber volume or total volume. (For inter-
pretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the
web version of this article.)
825
without external irreversibilities as stated above, the inherent
transport/reaction resistances in biofilm [19] and the biological
limit set by proton accumulation within cell membrane at high
electricity current [20,21] yields the power level “ceiling” of an
MFC. All these natural constraints lead to the inconvenient truth
that the MFC can only work under low energy density level
applications.
2.2. MFC versus PEM FC for power generation
As an energy generation unit, however, the market competitor
for MFC is the PEM FC, whose power density by its commercial
version can easily reach 140 kW/m3, at a surface power density of
105 W/m2. Restated, the ultimate power level by Refs. [9,10] and by
Ref. [11] are only 3e4 orders of magnitude lower than those pro-
vided by commercial FC unit [2]. In this section, the PEM fuel cells
are selected as the market competitor as power generation unit
which needs sufficiently high power output in use. Other low
power-density level applications such as the use as power sources
in certain sensors are not regarded “power generation unit” herein.
Table 1 lists an order-of-magnitude comparison between the
PEM FC and MFC. The essential differences between PEM FC and
MFC are the nature of electrode catalyst: (noble) metal catalysts for
the former and biocatalyst with exoelectrogens (or also with
endoelectrogens) in biofilms. The anodic catalyst in PEM FC is in the
form of metal clusters of size nm2. Conversely, the catalyst in MFC is
counted in the unit of biological cells, whose sizes are of order mm2.
Consider compact packings of cells (20-layers with 50 (say) cata-
lytic sites on individual cell) in anodic biofilm or of clusters on
electrode surface, the maximum catalyst concentration ratio for
PEM FC to MFC is or order 103 (¼(mm2/nm2)/20/50). The anodic
substrate for PEM FC is pure H2 and O2 gas, with product in the form
of water; while that for MFC is organic matters dissolved in water.
Therefore, there is no transport resistance for pure hydrogen gas to
anode but the transport resistance of substrates to anode of MFC
depends on the bulk mixing and the structure of biofilm consid-
ering the diffusivities of the dissolved organic compounds are of
order 109 m2/s. Therefore, the substrate from bulk anodic solution
to be reacted on anode surface would experience at least 104 times
higher resistance for the MFC than for the PEM FC. On the cathode
side, if both PEM FC and MFC utilized metal catalyst on cathode, the
product of PEM FC is liquid water to be discharged directly from
cathode surface to the drains, while that of MFC is various oxidized
compound that needs to be transported to bulk cathodic solution
across a liquid film (in case of using biocathode, the transport
resistance of product across the biofilm would also come into play).
Restated, the transport resistance at PEM FC cathodic chamber for
oxidized products is principally contributed by the pressure drop in
channel with two-phase flow [22] and that for MFC is by diffusional
transport. With appropriate flow channel design for both cells,
these two resistances can be assumed of the same order of
magnitude. The proton transport resistances across the PEM should
be greater in the PEM FC than that in MFC since the former is in
partial saturation in moisture; however, the higher operational
temperature for the former compensates part of the adverse effects
by the excess resistance with partial saturated medium. The
membrane-less MFC can be operated without PEM resistance. Since
the microbes in MFC needs time to adapt to a new eco-environment
[23] while the metal catalyst in PEM FC needs no pre-adaption, the
startup time for the former (in days) is much longer than the latter
(in mins). Moreover, since the biofilm composition and architecture
are very sensitive to the near-electrode environment [24,25], the
consistency of the electrochemical characteristics of the MFC bio-
film would be much poorer than that for the electrodes in PEM FC.
This concern also confines the applicability for the MFC as energy
826 J. Hu et al. / Renewable Energy 129 (2018) 824e829
Table 1
Comparisons of characteristics of MFC, PEM FC and anaerobic film reactor.
MFC
Catalyst biological cell (mm2)
Bulk transport organics/ions in water (Ac in
water 25  C ¼ 1.2
109 m2/s)
Substrate saturation ca. 5 A/m2 @ 0.6 V
Key parameter biofilm control
Consistency poor
Substrate adaptability good
Operation condition room temperature/pressure
Cost mediate
Startup slow
generation unit.
With the above arguments, it is the nature of the catalyst
applied that determines the MFC cannot be used as energy gener-
ation unit if taking PEM FC as the market competitor. Perhaps
owing to similar observation, Logan et al. [26] did not highlight the
use of MFC as an energy generation unit in the proposed future
perspectives. However, it is also the nature of the biocatalyst with
MFC that brings it advantage over the PEM FC. The microbes in MFC
can be adapted to various feeds with varying compositions and
flowrates while the metal catalyst in PEM FC is very specific to the
substrate and is easily to be poisoned by impurities. The MFC
handles liquid medium while PEM FC has to keep the cathodic
partially wet to allow the oxygen gas in, hence the former but the
latter is suitable for treatment of wastewaters. The revised version
of MFC needs no PEM or metal catalyst (use of biocathode, for
instance), which release the cost constraints with PEM and/or
precious metal catalyst [27]. The optimal growth temperature for
microbes in MFC is at room temperature, which is higher than that
for PEM FC that needs to operate metal catalyst at engineering
environment (60e90  C and 3e5 atms).
2.3. MFC versus biofilm reactor for wastewater treatment
Both MFC and anaerobic biofilm reactors incorporated immo-
bilize microbes to degrade pollutants. Table 1 lists an order-of-
magnitude comparison between the MFC and the biofilm re-
actors. There are numerous similarities between these two devices
when handling high-strength wastewaters: both utilize biological
cells for biocatalyst; the bulk transports for pollutants to biofilm are
controlled by the same mechanisms; both are operated at room
temperature and pressure. There are certain differences between
them, including (1) cell-cell electron transport mechanism for
biofilm reactor and the cell-solid mechanism for the MFC; (2)
mixed species biofilm for the former that yields more consistent
functions in wastewater treatment and the specific exoelectrogens
for the latter for electricity generation [28]; (3) pure chemical re-
actions for the former and the possible incorporation of electric
field stimulated in-situ reactions for the former on pollutants; (4)
the single chamber for the former determines the resistances for
pollution transport and reaction while the anodic, PEM and
cathodic chamber together determine the overall cell performance
for the latter.
As the references listed in Ref. [11] and those discussed in Sec. 3,
the MFC can handle wastewaters with 300e16000 mg/L COD at
organic loading rate (OLR) up to 53.2 kg/m3-d. Hence, since the
nature of the catalyst applied for MFC and PEM FC is the same, the
use of MFC as pollution control unit is proposed promising [11].
3. MFC as pollution control unit
The use of MFC as pollution control unit reported in
PEM FC Biofilm reactor
noble metal cluster (nm2) biological cell (mm2)
Pure hydrogen and oxygen. organics/ions in water (Ac in
(O2 in air 60  C ¼ 3.4
105 m2/s) water 25  C ¼ 1.2
109 m2/s)
>107 A/m2 ca. 5 A/m2 @ 0.6 V
water management biofilm control
nice mediate
poor good
60e90  C and 3e5 atms room temperature/pressure
high low
fast slow
contemporary literature is briefly summarized in this section.
3.1. Feed substrate
The MFCs were applied for treating high-strength wastewaters
or wastes [29]. Ma et al. [30] used a two-chambered, 1.1-L anion
exchange membrane MFC using swine wastewaters and potassium
ferricyanide as anolyte and catholyte to yield maximum power
density of 13 mW/m2 at HRT of 13d. Vijay et al. [31] applied 293-mL
two-chambered MFC for denitrifying cow manure and fruit waste
as anodic substrate. This MFC removed COD together with 6.5 kg-N
nitrate/m3-d with power density of 210 mW/m2. Passos et al. [32]
utilized 250-mL two-chambered MFC to treat secondary sludge
from a wastewater treatment plant. The maximum power density
level was reached on day 24 of operation, at 135 mW/m2.
The MFC tests on azo dyes are still a research focus. The BES was
utilized to remove 90.2% of azo wastewater with 395 mV and
1.77 mA [33]. These authors showed that the removal of dyes can
reduce toxicity of the wastewater so the remaining nitrate-rich
residue can be used directly as fertilizer. Sreelatha et al. [34]
applied 450-mL MFC to treat Acid Black 10B dye containing
wastewaters with electricity generation of 54 mW/m2. Interest-
ingly, the activities of degradation enzymes were shown in this
work to be enhanced by the yielded electric fields.
The MFC was also applied for handling numerous industrial
wastewaters, such as distillery wastewater [35], food, dairy and
alcohol wastewaters [36], glycerol wastewater [37], petroleum re-
finery wastewater [38], biorefinery effluent [39], diluted winery
wastewater [40] and soak liquor [41]. In general, these studies
provided the performance data for handing these wastewaters with
limited discussion on the involved mechanisms. Abbasi et al. [42]
employed a 1-L two-chambered MFC for mixed industrial waste-
waters. These authors noted that the sulphate, turbidity and EC
significantly affected the MFC performances. The reasons under-
lying these observations are not fully explored yet.
There are trials to use MFC for pollutant removals from waste-
waters by inter-chamber transport followed by reaction pathway.
Ping et al. [43] applied anion MFC to remove boron ions from
wastewaters in the presence of produced electricity. Plant-MFC was
used to remove Cr6þ ions from water with over 99% of dosed ions
being converted to Cr3þ and then precipitated to Cr(OH)3 or
adsorbed onto electrode surface [44]. Another trial employed MFC
to first transport NHþ 4 ions from anode to cathode and then con-
verted it to NH3 and via Anammox reactions [45].
3.2. Novel design
The contemporary studies proposed novel architecture for
tested MFC. (Studies on modified electrode materials were reported
but are out of scope of this mini review.) A typical example on the
electrode fabrication is the one by Ref. [46], who fabricated air-
 J. Hu et al. / Renewable Energy 129 (2018) 824e829
cathode using simple rolling-press method with activated carbon
powders and PTFE (6:1 w/w) being rolled on the stainless steel
mesh for MFC applications.
The novel designs proposed are majorly to make MFC of prac-
tical sizes. For instance, the MFC was made by sandwich form for
easy scale-up [47]. Khaifbadam et al. [48] used 9.64-L MFC to treat
municipal wastewaters with the anode carbon felt being used as a
filter to remove particulates in wastewaters. Oliot et al. [49] regu-
larly replaced the air-cathode of the 1.8-L MFC so the maximum
projected power density (on cathode area) reached 1.96 W/m2 with
50 cm2 bioanode. Four-air-cathode MFC of 938-mL volume was
applied to treat synthetic wastewater and municipal wastewater
[50].
Appropriately designed stacks can lead to practical MFC with
minimum engineering efforts. An et al. [51] used dual anode/
cathode stacks (1 L each) connected in series to enlarge the MFC for
ethanolamine wastewater treatment. He et al. [52] used a 4.5-L
MFC stack with four anodes and three two-sided cathodes to
treat domestic wastewater fed in parallel to individual anode or in
sequence to anodes. Kim et al. [53] proposed a new design on
stackable MFC modules for treating synthetic wastewaters of
160 mg/L COD. The tested tank of 30-L volume was used for
generating up to 41.5 mW/m2 power. Wu et al. [54] applied a 72-L
MFC stacks with large PEM surface to reactor ratio, high surface
area and enhanced adsorption by packed granular activated carbon
electrodes to treat synthetic wastewaters at 200e1200 mg/L COD.
Ge and He [27] proposed the use of a 200-L modularized MFC with
96 MFC modules for removing over 75% COD in primary effluent. Ni
et al. [55] tested the use of 1.5-L two-chambered MFC for treating
inorganic sulfur compound wastewaters. These authors noted a
power density ranging 0.23e4.8 mW/m2 using different reactor/
PEM configurations. Hiegemann et al. [56] integrated four single-
chambered membrane-less MFCs to a 45-L pilot system for treat-
ing municipal wastewaters. These authors can reach 82 mW/m2
(based on cathode) at 22 h HRT and at 20e30  C. Also, energy
balance calculations revealed that the addition of MFC is an energy-
gain step since the excess sludge production rate and oxygen de-
mand rate were both largely reduced.
The membrane-less MFC's are widely studied owing to the
lower construction costs than the conventional two-chambered
MFC [57,58]. However, owing to the absence of an ionic mem-
brane barrier, it is difficult to hold all fed organic matters in the
anodic chamber without crossover. Kim et al. [59] employed dual
anodes in membrane-less MFC for providing additional reaction
surface for the pollutant to reduce its crossover. Multiple electrodes
in individual chambers may be a design for minimizing the in-
homogeneity of flow and concentration fields in large-scale MFC
[60].
Adding chemicals to mitigating the pollutant levels for regu-
lating microbial activities in MFC is an active control mode for
enhanced cell performance. For instance, since high levels of
ammonium and nitrate can inhibit activities of exoelectrogens in
MFC [61], the addition of 300 g/L Fe/MnO catalyst and 1000 mL/min
O2 microbubbles can reduce ammonium and nitrate levels so the
MFC can yield 2.14 mA current in operation.
Novel operational strategy design was also proposed in MFC
studies. Wang et al. [62] proposed a novel strategy to enhance
heavy metal ion recovery from wastewaters. Two MFC of volume
28 mL each were used and connected in parallel first for charging.
Afterward, the MFC was linked to external load for discharging with
heavy metal ion recovery.
3.3. Integrating systems
As reviewed by Ref. [11], the MFC þ X and X þ MFC or parallel X
827
and MFC systems were proposed and tested. In general, the ad-
vantages of MFC and X should be highlighted in the integrating
system so the proposed can have the niche to use [63]. For instance,
the integrating reactors with anoxic/aerobic batch reactor followed
by a BES are applied to efficiently treat pharmaceutical wastewaters
[64]. These authors found that the power production was 536 mV
and 1.21 mA. Integrating membrane filtration module and 345-mL
MFC was applied with granular activated carbon being fluidized
across the membrane to reduce membrane fouling [65]. Sugnaux
et al. [66] used 10-L MFC followed by a 33-L microbial electrolysis
cell (MEC) to cogenerate ethanol and biohydrogen. The MFC can be
embedded into existing conventional wastewater treatment plants
for enhancing COD removal [67]. Qin et al. [68] investigated the
combined forward osmosis (FO) and MFC for treating wastewaters.
These authors measured the reverse salt flux over the FO mem-
brane during the treatment. A novel integrating system even
combined two MFCs, one for short-cut nitrification and the other
for autotrophic denitrification to remove 99.9% nitrogen at
0.0125 kg-N/m3-d with energy-positive scenario. The integrating
constructed wetland reactor and an MFC (total liquid volume of
1.2 L) were used for removing COD from oil sewage streams (Yang
et al., 2016 [69]). With a total of 95.7% oil removed, the maximum
power density was 102 mW/m2, higher than those using MFC alone.
However, the integrating systems may also suffer the disad-
vantages of both MFC and X if not properly designed and operated.
For instance, the MFC with photobioreactor for microalgal culti-
vation can be an option to zero-emission integrating system
[70,71]. Uggetti and Puigagut [72] applied an anaerobic digestion
reactor as anode and a microalgal photoreactor as cathode to
constitute an MFC. With coupling of these two reactors the oxygen
and CO2 demand for the fuel cell can be mutually supplied, which
enhanced microalgal biomass production rates and anaerobic
digestion rates. Possible applications of using photobioreactor with
MFC are of potential to reach aerobic wastewater treatment
without aeration. Integrating 5.65-L single-chambered MFC and
granular activated carbon adsorption column was proposed to treat
palm oil mill effluent at >90% COD removal with power density
55 mW/m3 (¼2.75 mW/m2) [73]. However, the large difference in
growth rates and the need of large surface to volume ratio for
photobioreactor can lead to difficulty to stable MFC operation [74].
4. Ways forward
As discussed in Sec. 2, MFC should be used in applications of
without the need of very high electrical current fluxes, such as in
environmental pollution control units. Nonetheless, the current
power density levels in pollution control units ranged
100e1000 mW/m2 (Fig. 1), suggesting that there is still large room
for performance improvements by novel design as a pollution
treatment unit to the “ceiling” 17 W/m3 by Ref. [10] or 88 W/m3 by
Ref. [12]. Efforts should be devoted to novel MFC design and
operation strategies so the reactor performance can be further
improved in low power level applications.
One of current trend for MFC studies is noted to apply it for
handling different substrate-containing wastewaters or waste
streams. Principally any substrate has sufficient reducing power can
be oxidized at anode and that has oxidizing power can be reduced
at cathode. The studies reporting not only reactor performance but
also with detailed mechanism discussion should be encouraged.
Conversely, the wastewater treatment with resource recovery can
be a niche approach. for instance, You et al. [75] employed the MFC
to accelerate human urine to NHþ 4 , which can be precipitated with
magnesium and phosphate ions to form struvite for recovery.
Liter-scale MFC has been studied. The practical version of tonne-
scale MFC should be proposed and tested with real wastewaters.
828 J. Hu et al. / Renewable Energy 129 (2018) 824e829
The comprehensive techno-economic analyses based on tonne-
scale MFC data are needed to do rational prospect comparison
between numerous MFC configurations and operational protocols
to treat specific wastewaters.
Other novel low power level applications can be studied. In
particular, the integrating system with MFC should be the focus of
further research. For instance, since the power generated by MFC is
too low, it was proposed to apply the yielded low electrical current
to enhance electrokinetic remediation efficiency for removing Cd
and Pb in soil [76]. Additionally, the use of MFC as power supply as
low-power sensors [77] or implantable power sources for medical
devices was discussed [78]. The involvement of electrical fields in
biofilm and electrode/cell interface opens a new horizon for
enhanced degradation of recalcitrant pollutants [79,80], which is
an exciting field that deserves further studies.
5. Conclusions
The proposal of using MFC as an energy generation unit was
against by an order-of-magnitude argument based on power den-
sity level using PEM fuel cells as the market competitor. The current
literature of using MFC on low power density wastewater treat-
ment is listed in this mini review. The challenges and prospects for
further research and development needs on the MFC technologies
are highlighted.
Acknowledgement
This work is financially supported by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (51576060, U1304528), Program for Science &
Technology Innovation Talents in Universities of Henan Province
(16HASTIT026) and Plan for Scientific Innovation Talent of Henan
Province (174100510020).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2017.02.001.
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