Microbial electrolysis cell scale-up for combined wastewater treatment and hydrogen production

Estimating microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) investment costs in wastewater treatment plants: Case study

“…In fact, the presence of an MEC reactor prior to aerobic treatment is similar to the energy recovery through methane production. However, the AD process is only feasible at influent concentrations above 2000 gtCOD m À3 [59], while the MEC process may address relatively low-strength influents containing 300e2000 g-tCOD m À3 [60]. In addition, anaerobic reactors are operated at much longer HRTs [59], which increase the system cost and footprint.…”

Hydrogen production from continuous flow, microbial reverse-electrodialysis electrolysis cells treating fermentation wastewater

“…4B and C). At an HRT of 8 h, hydrogen gas was produced at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.1 L H 2 /L reactor /d (overall yield of 1.1 ± 0.1 L H 2 /g-COD), which was similar to rates produced in MEC studies treating complex substrates (Gil-Carrera et al, 2013;Montpart et al, 2015). The gas collected at all HRTs was predominantly hydrogen (95 ± 1%), with the remainder CO 2 that was stripped from the bicarbonate medium.…”

“…A maximum hydrogen gas production rate of 1.5 L H 2 /L anolyte -d was achieved at the beginning of a fed-batch cycle in the MREC (7 cell pairs) when the acetate concentration in the anolyte was high (initially 0.78 g COD/L), but the rate decreased over the fed-batch cycle. There have been no previous MREC studies, and only a few MEC studies, under continuous flow conditions Gil-Carrera et al, 2013;Nam et al, 2014). The effect of hydraulic retention time (HRT) and applied potentials on the performance of larger (210-302 mL liquid volume) continuous flow MECs treating real and synthetic fermentation effluent has been studied Nam et al, 2014).…”

Cathode material as an influencing factor on beer wastewater treatment and methane production in a novel integrated upflow microbial electrolysis cell (Upflow-MEC)

“…They have reported that the presence of methanogens in anode was a reason for low CE. Carrera et al [49], operated an MEC with a volume of 855 mL, and anode size of 50 cm 2 . The CE was 25%, and they have suggested that increasing the anode size to the reactor volume ratio will bring about a great increase in CE.…”