Non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory pharmaceutical wastewater treatment using a two‐chambered microbial fuel cell

Abstract

The two‐chambered microbial fuel cell (MFC) was designed and used for studying the efficiency of the real wastewater treatment from a non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory pharmaceutical plant as well as from synthetic wastewater containing diclofenac sodium (DS). The removal of the contaminants was expressed regarding chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, as measured by spectrophotometry experiments. Moreover, the effect of two different types of the cathode on current characteristics and COD removal was investigated. This research showed that the Pt‐coated Ti cathode could lead to higher efficiency of both power density and COD removal. In this case, the results indicated that the maximum power density (Pmax) was 20.5 and 6.5 W/m3 and the maximum COD removal was 93 and 78% for MFCs using real and synthetic wastewater, respectively.

Design and feasibility study of novel paraboloid graphite based microbial fuel cell for bioelectrogenesis and pharmaceutical wastewater treatment

“…They also revealed that MFC reduced the phosphate concentration in the chemical industrial wastewater from 52.7 to 35.7 mg/L. Similarly, Amari et al, [33] reported that the 78 and 93% of COD of synthetic and pharmaceutical plant wastewater was reduced by dual-chamber constructed MFC (Plexiglas sheet). Furthermore, Ismail and his research group observed that Perspex glass made microbial fuel cell (MFC) with granular activated carbon (GSC) as biofilm successfully reduced up to 83% of pharmaceutical wastewater after continuous operation of 45 days [32].…”

“…The 65 mL of wastewater (based on the available volume of the anode that was 70 mL) was taken into the anodic chamber along with 2 mL of the nutrient solution (the acetate solution) through the sampling opening on the lid of anode using the syringe. In the cathode chamber, 100 mM of the phosphate buffer solution having the neutral pH (pH 7) was added as the catholyte to increase the conductivity (M1000 Benchtop; Thomas Scientific, USA) and maintain the pH for electricity-generating bacteria [33].…”

“…Zhuang et al, [19] performed an experiment to treat real wastewater by parallel stack microbial fuel cell (PSMFC) at two different organic loading rates as 1.2 and 4.9 kg COD/m 3 d. They stated that PSMFC removed up to 90.8 and 83.8% of NH4 + -N and COD of wastewater at 1.2 kg COD/m 3 d and 80.7 and 77.1% NH4 + -N and COD at 4.9 kg COD/m 3 d. They also observed maximum power density and voltage of 175.7 W/m 2 and 1.8 V respectively at 4.9 kg COD/m 3 d. Mohanakrishna et al, [20] investigated the treatment of Labanah whey wastewater using cylindrical graphite microbial fuel cell and observed the maximum substrate deprivation efficiency of 72.76% with maximum power and current generation of 1.02 mW and 3.2 mA respectively at 100 Ω. Prasad and coworkers reported the maximum COD reduction of 91.50% with power generation of 335 mV during pharmaceutical wastewater treatment by microbial fuel cell after a hydraulic retention period of 12 days [25]. Similarly, Amari and his research group observed the maximum COD reduction of 93 and 78%, and power density of 20.5 and 6.5 W/m 3 for real and synthetic wastewater respectively by dual-chambered microbial fuel cell [26].…”

Microbial Fuel Cells, Concept, and Applications

“…MFC technology is capable of using organic waste as a substrate; consequently various types of waste both solid and liquid forms have been tested. These include a wide range of waste from common wastewater types such as domestic (Corbella and Puigagut 2018), dairy (Luo et al 2017), or food processing wastewater (Cecconet et al 2018) to "not-so-easy to clean" types of wastewater such as landfill leachate (Greenman et al 2009), mining wastewater (Ni et al 2016) and pharmaceutical wastewater (Amari and Boshrouyeh Ghandashtani 2019). Solid wastes such as municipal solid waste (Chiu et al 2016) and fruit and vegetable wastes have also been investigated (Venkata Mohan et al 2010).…”

Engineered nanomaterials in microbial fuel cells – Recent developments, sustainability aspects, and future outlook

“…There are also reports on bioelectricity generation from (waste)water in MFCs by reducing heavy metals such as hexavalent chromium [10]. Hence, MFCs can be used efficiently to deal with industrial (waste)water contaminated by various organic and inorganic compounds such as pulp and paper [11], textile [12], and pharmaceutical [13] effluents.…”