Enhancement of power production with tartaric acid doped polyaniline nanowire network modified anode in microbial fuel cells

•A tartaric acid doped polyaniline network was applied for MFC anode modification.•Significant improvement on MFC performance was obtained with this modification method.•This organic acid doped polyaniline was superior to that doped with inorganic acids. The feasibility to use tartaric acid doped PANI for MFC anode modification was determined. Uniform PANI nanowires doped with tartaric acid were synthesized and formed mesoporous networks on the carbon cloth surface. By using this tartaric acid doped PANI modified carbon cloth (PANI-TA) as the anode, the voltage output (435±15mV) and power output (490±12mW/m2) of MFC were enhanced by 1.6 times and 4.1 times compared to that of MFC with plain carbon cloth anode, respectively. Strikingly, the performance of PANI-TA MFC was superior to that of the MFCs with inorganic acids doped PNAI modified anode. These results substantiated that tartaric acid is a promising PANI dopant for MFC anode modification, and provided new opportunity for MFC performance improvement.