The recycling and treatment of wastewater using microbial fuel cells (MFCs) has been attracting significant attention as a way to control energy crises and water pollution simultaneously. Despite all efforts, MFCs are unable to produce high energy or efficiently treat pollutants due to several issues, one being the anode’s material. The anode is one of the most important parts of an MFC. Recently, different types of anode materials have been developed to improve the removal rate of pollutants and the efficiency of energy production. In MFCs, carbon-based materials have been employed as the most commonly preferred anode material. An extensive range of potentials are presently available for use in the fabrication of anode materials and can considerably minimize the current challenges, such as the need for high quality materials and their costs. The fabrication of an anode using biomass waste is an ideal approach to address the present issues and increase the working efficiency of MFCs. Furthermore, the current challenges and future perspectives of anode materials are briefly discussed.

With high hydrogen content and moderate dehydrogenation conditions, metal amidoboranes have been regarded as potential hydrogen storage candidates and have attracted increasing attention recently. In this review we provide a practical introduction to the recent progress on the syntheses, crystal structures and dehydrogenation properties of metal amidoboranes and their derivatives.

The prospect of building a future energy system on hydrogen has stimulated much research effort in developing hydrogen storage technologies. One of the potential materials newly developed is sodium amidoborane (NaNH₂BH₃) which evolves ∼7.5 wt% hydrogen at temperatures as low as 91 °C. In this paper, two methods of synthesizing pure NaNH₂BH₃ were reported. One method is by reacting NaH and ammonia borane in THF at low temperatures, and the other is by reacting NaNH₂ and ammonia borane in THF at ambient temperature. Non-isothermal testing on the thermolysis of solid NaNH₂BH₃ showed that hydrogen evolution was composed of two exothermic steps. More than 1 equiv. H₂ was evolved rapidly at temperatures below 87 °C. After evolving 2 equiv. H₂, NaH was identified in solid products and coexisted with amorphous BN.