Performance of low cost scalable air–cathode microbial fuel cell made from clayware separator using multiple electrodes

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

“…The optimum operating temperature for TSS removal was found to be at 35 C with removal percentage of 98.0 AE 0.6%. However, for TVS removal, the optimum performance was found to be at 30 C with removal percentage of 90.7 AE 0.4%, followed by 89.5 AE 0.6% at 35 C. For TS removal, the performance was generally about 20-40% lower as compared to TSS and TVS removals where the maximum removal was found to be at 35 C with removal percentage of 41.4 AE 0.4%. Optimum temperatures for solids removal were typically ranged in between 30 C and 35 C, which can be explained by the fact that the MFCs anaerobic anode chamber has better tendency to reduce solids production at such conditions, where the bacterial biomass production by the MFCs system are much lower due to the anaerobic environment.…”

“…With the absence of oxygen in the MFCs, pHs tend to be decreased due to the biodegradation of the organic matter in the wastewater in order to produce fatty acids [42]. Thus, this scenario explained the great fall of pH in the first 19 h of operation in MFCs operated at 30 C and 35 C, where the increase in microbial Table 2 Pollutants removal efficiency under various operating conditions in between MFC-adsorption hybrid system and other MFCs.…”

“…From Fig. 4a, optimum temperature for effective turbidity removal was found to be at 30 C with the removal percentage of 98.00 AE 0.7 as compared to 96.0 AE 0.4% when operated at 25 C in the previous study [32]. As compared to the performance of the fuel cell which incorporated biocatalyst in the system and operated at ambient temperature (28 AE 2 C) without the application of GAC [53], such system was able to remove turbidity maximum up to 96%, which was 2% less as compared to the MFC system in the current study.…”

“…The optimum operating temperatures can be seen to be $25 -35 C which is about the temperature of the POME ($30-35 C) when obtained freshly from the original source. Therefore, MFC-adsorption hybrid system can be ideally implemented in tropical countries where the tropical temperature of [30][31][32][33][34][35] C is very close to the optimum operating temperature.…”

“…Thus far, not much research has been done on the air-cathode MFC with ceramic pot as the substitute to proton exchange membrane (PEM) except Ghadge & Ghangrekar [30] and Chatterjee and Ghangrekar et al [31]. The reactor setups for both studies were done on standalone MFC and recently, only one had come to the effort of integrating MFC with adsorption hybrid system with ceramic pot as the PEM [32].…”