Electricity Generation from Wastewater Using an Anaerobic Fluidized Bed Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

The anaerobic fluidized bed microbial fuel cell (AFBMFC) was developed to generate electricity while simultaneously treating wastewater. During a complete cycle, the AFBMFC continuously generated electricity with a maximum power density of 1100 mW/m 2 and removal of total chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 89%. To achieve this power density, the artificial electronmediator neutral red (NR) was employed in the anode chamber. Granular biological electrodes, fluidization behavior, electron mediators, and temperature were evaluated to improve power production and wastewater treatment efficiency. The results showed that the maximum power density production of granule-graphite AFBMFC was 530 mW/m 2 , much higher than 410 mW/m 2 using a granular activated carbon AFBMFC in the same reactor. Fluidization behaviors enhance the mass transfer and momentum transfer between activated carbon and wastewater. The power density increased with increasing methylene blue (MB) and NR concentration. Furthermore, power density reveals a slight increase as MB and NR concentrations exceed 0.5 and 1.7 mmol/L. The optimum temperature ranges from 23 to 40 °C. The Coulombic efficiency was 9.3% under the best operating conditions.

Effects of temperature on wastewater treatment in an affordable microbial fuel cell-adsorption hybrid system

“…In comparison to the pH profiles in a non-hybrid dual chamber MFC done in the previous study, similar trend can be observed when operated in the range of [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] C and 20-35 C where the pH of the fresh feed (pH 7.4) reached the minimum value of about 6.2 and 6.7, respectively after operated for 20-25 h before the pH started to move up slowly and finally became almost constant [39]. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to compare this performance with the current study because the previous study was done in a wide range of operating temperatures whereas in the current study, the pH profiles was obtained at each specific operating temperatures.…”

“…Therefore, such phenomenon may affect the substrate utilization rate which therefore minimal substrate is being converted into bio-energy. Low voltage generation at elevated operating temperatures (>40 C) may be due to the denaturation of enzyme which therefore, lead to low voltage generation as a result of poor electrons transfer to the electrode [37]. On top of that, when bacteria was exposed to high temperatures continuously, important elements presented in the cell such as proteins, nucleic acids or other temperature-sensitive matter may suffered an irreversible damage which therefore affect the cell function.…”

“…Majority of the effective pollutants removal were done by integrating MFC with other unit operation or processes. Recently, it has been reported that greater bio-energy generation and wastewater treatment can be accomplished when MFC is hybridized with unit operations or processes such as adsorption [17], membrane bioreactor [10], sequencing batch reactor [18], membrane, aeration system [19], anaerobic digester [20], aerobic system [15], biofermentor [21], anaerobic fluidized bed [22], wetland [23], anaerobic fluidized membrane reactor [24] and anaerobic sludge blanket [25]. MFC could also possibly be combined with other process such as nitritation-anammox where the research had been greatly developing in order to remove wastewater which content high level of nitrogen content [26,27].…”

“…However, to the best knowledge of the authors, the studies of the effect of temperatures had only been done on these few sources which includes beer brewery wastewater [33], domestic wastewater [34][35][36], sanitary wastewater [37], barley processing wastewater [38] and synthetic wastewater [39,40]. Municipal water treatment experiments which were done previously at low temperatures (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15) C) could also be used as a source of high potential MFC operation for electricity generation [41].…”

A Critical Review on Processes and Energy Profile of the Australian Meat Processing Industry

“…In MFC, the electrical power is produced due to microbial oxidation of organic and inorganic constituents of wastewater [70]. The MFC concept is not new; however, there are various configurations of MFC that have recently been tested by different researchers.…”