Evaluation of a continuous flow microbial fuel cell for treating synthetic swine wastewater containing antibiotics

Abstract

Microbial fuel cell (MFC) systems are promising technologies for wastewater treatment and renewable energy generation simultaneously. Performance of a double-chamber microbial fuel cell (MFC) to treat synthetic swine wastewater containing sulfonamide antibiotics (SMs) was evaluated in this study. The MFC was operated in continuous modes at different conditions. Results indicated that the current was successfully generated during the operation.The performance of MFC under the sequential anode-cathode operating mode is better than that under the single continuous running mode. Specifically, higher removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (>90%) was achieved under the sequential anode-cathode operating mode in comparison with that in the single continuous mode (>80%). Nutrients were also be removed in the MFC's cathode chamber with the maximum removal efficiency of 66.6 ± 1.4% for NH 4 + -N and 32.1 ± 2.8% for PO 4 3--P. Meanwhile, SMs were partly removed in the sequential anode-cathode operating with the value in a range of 49.4% -59.4 % for sulfamethoxazole, 16.8% -19.5% for sulfamethazine and 14.0% -16.3% for sulfadiazine, respectively. SMs' inhibition to remove other pollutants in both electrodes of MFC was observed after SMs exposure, suggesting that SMs exert toxic effects on the microorganisms.A positive correlation was found between the higher NH 4 + -N concentration used in this study and the removal efficiency of SMs in the cathode chamber. In short, although the continuous J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o fJournal Pre-proof flow MFC is feasible for treating swine wastewater containing antibiotics, its removal efficiency of antibiotics requires to be further improved.

RETRACTED: Treatment mechanism of hexavalent chromium wastewater in constructed wetland-microbial fuel cell coupling system

“…The microorganisms of various genera in the Proteobacteria phylum play important roles in degrading substrates and generating electricity (Obata et al, 2020). Cheng et al (Cheng et al, 2021) noted that the high EAB abundances in both devices would have promoted COD removal, and the results confirmed that this did occurred. The three most common microbe phyla in the CW-MFC were Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteroidetes.…”

Performance of Hybrid Process Constructed Wetland-Microbial Fuel Cell for Melanoidin Degradation and Simultaneous Electricity Generation

“…The study by Apollon et al [16] has described that the MFC can generate green electrical energy through the metabolic reaction of an exoelectrogen. Conversely, 2 core problems still exist with the MFC such as the complete utilization of substrate by bacterial catalyst with results in unstable power generation, and low-power generation during the process [17][18][19]. Hence, it cannot be used on a larger scale like an industrial scale.…”

Simultaneous degradation efficiency of C-MFCs for three pollutants in aquaculture wastewater

“…MFCs makes up for the shortcomings of traditional biological treatment processes, and is an emerging innovative technology for sewage treatment and synchronous power generation (Liu and Yu, 2020;Raychaudhuri and Behera, 2022). In MFCs studies, domestic wastewater (Puig et al, 2011;James et al, 2020), industrial wastewater (Yu et al, 2015;Abbasi et al, 2016), and swine wastewater (Cheng et al, 2021) were demonstrated for power generation and treatment.…”

“…Relevant studies have shown that MFCs has been successfully applied to remove ammonia nitrogen (NH 3 -N), biochemical oxygen demand (COD) and total phosphorus (TP) in aquaculture effluent, indicating that MFCs has great potential in the treatment of aquaculture effluent (Estrada-Arriaga et al, 2015;Cheng et al, 2021). Although MFCs has a good effect on the removal of COD from laboratory environmental wastewater, the removal of NH 3 -N and TP needs to be further improved (Estrada-Arriaga et al, 2015;Zhu et al, 2022).…”